


play it, sam (but i forget how it goes)

by encroix



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 189
Words: 45,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/pseuds/encroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A drabble for every episode of the series. Originally began early 2008. Imported 2013. (Later chapters are better quality than earlier ones.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. pilot

Barney Stinson doesn't do cheesy. Not cheesy, mushy, romantic– none of those Lifetime made-for-tv movie crapshoot sentiments. Except he feels like he's in one of those Kraft Mac & Cheese commercials – there's cheddar everywhere and he's stepping in it; it sucks him in like quicksand. "Hey, Barney?" Ted said. And he looked over and saw her.

It was like a line out of a bad '60s love song.

_He saw her standing there in hunter green  
The prettiest girl he'd ever seen_

"See that girl?"  _Of course_ he sees the girl. He's got to be blind  _not_ to see her. He feels this weird sense of nostalgia, feels the swell in his heart that he tries to convince himself is attraction, but it feels like a movie.  _Anchors Aweigh_ or something he and James used to watch when mom was out at "bingo."  _See that girl?_ , he would say and Ted would nod.  _One day, I'm gonna marry that girl._

But Ted has that look in his eye that says, "I-think-you're-the-one-for-me-please-let's-get-married-and-have-babies" and Barney knows to leave well enough alone. After all, this is what best friends do. Make sacrifices.

"Dude, she looks like she'd like it dirty! Go say hi."


	2. purple giraffe

He's leaning against the wall, beer in hand, watching her. It's a little risky, he knows, but he can always chalk it up to spying for Ted, really. It's weird to think of himself acting like this. He's Barney Stinson. The man with the suit. The style. The charm. The guy with endless one night stands.

He slept with what's-her-name to help himself get over the idea that had begun to worm its way into his head. He doesn't believe in this. He doesn't believe in this anymore. And the sooner his brain starts to realize that fact, the better off they'll all be.

Ted is getting the talk from Lily, but he's known Ted for a while (and is a little better at reading people than everyone seems to think) and once he's set his mind on a girl, he won't let go. He's like a little pit bull. If she's the one, watch out. And she is the one for him. For the moment. Who knows?

He's never really believed in fate, but what the hell.

"Yeah, well, the one is heading up to the roof with Carlos." He tries to swallow his feeling of satisfaction (doesn't work).


	3. sweet taste of liberty

As they head towards the gate, he grabs Ted's sleeve and tugs it. "Dude, dibs on the brunette."

Ted looks confused. "What?"

"Dibs on the brunette," he mumbles. Ted holds his ticket a little apprehensively, like he's stuck between wanting to hit Barney and wanting to jump around and thank him for a free flight to Philadelphia (but what do people do in Philadelphia? Pennsylvania's so…woodsy).

"Uh, sure." Ted's still wary. But Barney usually knows what he's doing with women, so who is he to question that? "Why her?"

Barney doesn't reply, just half-smiles as they board. "Just 'cause."

" _Okay_."


	4. return of the shirt

Of course, the first time they have a real conversation, they argue. They're the first ones there and she has no idea who he is other than "one of Ted's friends." He gives her a wink and a grin, shakes her hand. "I'm Barney, but you can call me the Barnacle," he says, with a click of the tongue and a raised brow. She just rolls her eyes.

"So what do you do?"

"Oh, please." He sips at his scotch. "But I know what  _you_ do."

She looks nervous for a second, but then raises her own brow in return. Gauntlet? Meet floor. "Yeah?"

"Metro News 1, hot newscaster that no one watches."

"Pe—People watch it!"

"Oh, please.  _But_ this does open up a nifty financial arrangement."

"And what is that?"

"I will give you fifty dollars to say booger on TV."

"What? No! I have integrity."

"No, you have a news show where your biggest story is a dog that manages to take out its owner's trash." She sighs and he grins. "You know you want to take it."

She narrows her eyes, and he thinks her resolve is beginning to waver. "No!" she declares. "I have integrity. I'm a journalist."

"Sure," he says, sipping at his scotch again. "You and the people on the New School Free Press." He gasps in mock revelation. "You should do an expose on cafeteria food. What  _is_ Monday's mystery meat?" She does her best to look angry, but he can note the corners of her lips turning up into a barely-there smile.

Later that night, when he beckons her to step into his web, he wonders if this is really a safe game to play. After all, she was Ted's girl first. (When did his life become a Rick Springfield song?)


	5. okay awesome

On the cab ride home, Lily says, "Robin and I flashed our boobs tonight." With half a smile, she turns to Marshall, "I feel young again."

"Baby, you were never old."

"Aw, thanks, baby." As they kiss, Ted clears his throat and Barney rolls his eyes. The driver peers at them through the rearview mirror. Robin doesn't coo with affection.  _Point for Robin_. But he should not be calculating imaginary scores for a woman who seems way too awesome.

"This is not  _Taxicab Confessions_ , all right?" Then, it hits. "You  _flashed_ your boobs?" Barney snorts. She surprises him sometimes, though not really. It seems like something she'd do – she's impulsive, daring, out there. Which is why she and Ted will never work. Not in this Universe, not in the other ones either. He shakes his head. After all, he should  _not_ be thinking this. Ted is his best friend, and, having hit on his  _cousin_ earlier, he's really not the best judge of character tonight.

"You flashed your boobs," he says, instilling his voice with an air of admiration. "Right on, Scherbatsky." Ted just throws his head back against the seat.

She holds her fist out. "Pound it." He grins.


	6. slutty pumpkin

He plays with his tumbler as she talks about Halloween. Talks about Mike, her boyfriend who isn't. He imagines the carefully chiseled glass to be her features, her skin. Thinks of dragging fingertips along her jawline, her cheek, the contours of her neck.

He imagines her craning her head up to look at him, eyes half-closed in ecstasy, breath hitching in her throat with a, "Barney, how did you--". And he'd just draw lines against her skin, make goosebumps prickle up on the flesh of her arms, tease her until her breaths grew ragged and her kind words became threats.

And when she talks about staying at home, dressing up as naked people, he snorts with laughter. Because that's all he can do before something like jealousy seizes at his throat, makes it clench, makes his jaw tighten, makes his hand tighten around his tumbler, makes him want more scotch. So he laughs, because that's all he can do.

And when her knee brushes against his, and he feels the slight collision of bone against bone through silk, he has to bite his tongue to keep from saying something stupid. No one can know. The immune Barnacle got bitten. Hard.


	7. matchmaker

When she nonchalantly slides into the booth next to him, she miscalculates and her knee bumps his. As Ted rattles off the facts and statistics about his next possible  _one_ , they continue their strange dance of space. Maybe she did slide in a little too forcefully, so that hitting him was inevitable. But it doesn't faze him. He just pushes back against their cushion of space as he talks, knee knocking hers, shoulder brushing shoulder.

She wonders how that would translate in bed.  _Whoa, Robin, where the hell did that come from?_  She feels a warmth start in her cheeks and work its way down to her collarbone. She clears her throat, turns her hips ever so slightly (her knees bump his a little more, always just a little more).

When she goes to brush off a piece of lint on her pant leg, it's natural that she would skim the fabric over his hip. After all, the laws of physics say something about that, right? Skipping stones and whatever?

She turns to look at him as he speaks. He plays with the beer bottle as he talks, rolling the neck between his hands, and she notices how his adam's apple bobs with each sardonic comment. His neck and jaw are open to her scrutiny – clean shaven, smelling of soap and aftershave.

She can see why he gets so many women. If she were to pinpoint the one thing that was lacking about Barney Stinson, looks would certainly not be her answer.

She feels a sudden urge to ruffle his hair. But she swallows the wish, coughs it up as a soft chuckle to his comments. He turns to look at her, grins at her. The brightness stuns her (she kind of wishes it wouldn't). She starts to feel dizzy.


	8. the duel

It strikes her as really tasteless when he runs his hand along her leg as he tells them about how he's on a date with another woman. His left hand settles on the vinyl of the booth, then trickles down to slowly touch her knee. And when he runs it up slowly, centimeter by centimeter, her mouth suddenly feels very dry. He brushes back down towards her knee again before he settles his hand on the table. The corners of his lips twitch as he continues telling Ted about his online date (it's amazing how he can keep a straight face really), but two can play that game (and plus, now she's curious).

So she coos to him over the phone, throws in a few breathy moans, and waits. As he responds, she hears the slight hitch in his voice before he talks about Aunt Cathy, the slight shift from one timbre to another.

When he leaves his date and passes by their booth to say goodbye, she notices the way his eyes flash briefly. Oh, yeah. Now it's on. They both have their parts to play (and they're so good at them).

And when Ted and Marshall go in to see Lily, he stands and walks over to her, so close he's practically on her toes. Leaning in, he whispers, "You don't know what you started back at McClaren's."

Never one to turn away from a challenge, she inches even closer. "Oh, no, I think I do."

He hums, his warm breath near her ear. As he slowly pulls away, she feels a soft stream of breath against her neck and bites down on her lip to keep from groaning. She narrows her eyes. The air between them crackles with static. She ignores the emerging butterflies in her stomach.


	9. belly full of turkey

Maybe there is a soul beneath all the Armani.

The thought strikes her oddly, but he looks genuinely happy.

But Ted is looking for the Achilles heel in this because Barney's not that type of guy (he's the one who spends Thanksgiving in strip clubs, they thought) and she sticks with him because he told her he loved her and gave her colored instruments and roses (and really, he should get an A for effort).

But when they get Barney kicked out, she tries to chase the image out of her head with a bottle of wine. (It doesn't work.)


	10. the pineapple incident

When Robin walks in, he fidgets. He's not really one to remark on anything about a woman beyond, "She's hot", but there's something about the blue sweater that kind of brings out the blue in her eyes. And he knows about these things because, hello, clearly a man with fashion sense as awesome as his knows what he's talking about.

But Ted has a girl in his bedroom.  _Ted_ has  _a girl_ in  _his bedroom_. And while he would usually be high-fiving for this kind of debauchery, it's Robin, so the high-fiving seems inappropriate somehow. She's going to get hurt. Somehow she and Ted have started this dance with her being  _completely oblivious_ to it but he starts to see affection in her eyes when she looks at him. They're getting there.

Lily wrings her hands, Marshall clears his throat. They all know what's going to happen. "Top of the morning to you," he mumbles. And later, as they shuffle into the kitchen, he files behind Marshall and Lily (who are still trying to eavesdrop) and thinks about covering his ears (he doesn't). But he tunes them out anyway. He never really was good at dealing with disaster (still isn't).


	11. the limo

The first time she steps into the limo, of course  _he's_ the one sitting closest to the door, so when she shuffles in, her dress is tight around her legs as she scoots past him. He can smell her perfume and her hair brushes against his shoulder as she turns to sit. He clears his throat, loosens his tie.

She crosses her legs, talks about how Derek ditched her for work.

He'd never do that, not even if Putin called (which, whatever, they had a falling out when he beat him at archery). But he listens and watches as Ted leans into her space, wishes he could do the same without getting called out on it. (But then again, he's not good at making grand declarations of love so often).

Later, when they stop at Gray's Papaya (which, whatever, Lily should have known, he only eats Papaya King, it was there first), he gets out to stretch his legs, follows them into the place. Robin gets one of the specials and he trails behind her, his sleeves crinkling as he crosses his arms. She makes him take a sip of her pina-colada-flavored shake ( _how can you have lived in Manhattan your whole life and never tried this?_ , she asks, shocked) and bites into her hot dog. The mustard smears across the corner of her mouth.

He grabs a napkin, wipes it off for her, doesn't say anything (he knows he should've said something, but he feels a little lightheaded; his arms don't feel like his own). She stands close and he can hear the sound of her breathing, feel the brunt of her awkwardness. "Scherbatsky got a thing for the wieners," he tries, with a wink. She rolls her eyes and he breathes a soft sigh of relief. Game on.

 

 


	12. the wedding

When Robin tells them that she broke up with Derek, his chest feels tight and his fingers curl tighter around the tumbler. "Never really clicked," she hums and he brings the tumbler up to his lips for a sip. "He was pretty bummed."

This whole feeling of awesome that's running through is veins right now is kind of inappropriate.  _Really_ inappropriate.

So he tries to talk himself out of it. "He can put his platinum card on a fishing line and reel in ten chicks hotter than you." (It doesn't really work.)

But then Ted steals his thunder. Like always.


	13. drumroll please

"I bumped into Barney. At the reception." She segments her words, chooses them carefully, because she didn't just  _bump into_ Barney. She collided into him, eyes red from crying in the bathroom, emotions still fragile.

"Of course," she had hissed, dropping to her knees to pick up the fallen contents of her purse. The tears had fallen then because  _of course_ her life would fall to pieces right now, after figuring out her own feelings.

"Robin?"

She gasped. "Barney. Barney, oh, no, oh, you can't see me like this." She followed it up with a loud sniffle. As she stood up, she must have gotten that look like she was going to bolt because he just held her arms.

He didn't say anything, just pulled out a monogrammed handkerchief ( _seriously_ , they still make those?) and handed it to her. "I didn't see anything," he says, softly. And she dabs at her eyes, though it's a little weird handing it back to him. Their fingers brush.

And then, he was suddenly in her space, arms wrapped around her, smelling of expensive soap and pressed silk and Barney. And she broke down. "It's just Ted, he—he's moved on and I don't know, I—"

"Ted just needs time…to figure out what he wants." And the situation felt so surreal because Barney's supposed to be trying to pick up bridesmaids. But he's here, holding her as she cries, in the hallway.

"You bumped into Barney?" Lily gasps. "Oh my God! Was he having sex?"

She snorts. "No."

_"You better not tell anyone about this," she warned._

_"Please, Scherbatsky," he said with a roll of the eyes, carefully tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket (had he been holding it the whole time?). "Like I'd want anyone to know that I did this."_


	14. zip, zip, zip

When they walk to the food court, his hand hovers over her hip until it settles against the small of her back. She turns to look at him, eyebrow arching in intrigue, but she doesn't press it. He gets them each a hot dog, a pretzel, and a huge guzzler of a fountain drink to split.

"Barney, is this a date?" she asks as she bites into the pretzel.

"Uh, no, if this was a date, there would be a lot more sex involved," he says as he sips at the Dr. Pepper. "Besides, Barney Stinson doesn't date."

"There's only one soda, I just assumed you wanted to be one of those sickeningly sweet images in calendars."

"Scherbatsky, do you see the size of this thing? It is a 48 oz. container. This is their only size."

"Okay, fine." But as he bites into her soft pretzel, she shifts forward a little bit to sip at the soda and her knees bump into his. He's wearing jeans which is practically an impossibility, and the ends of his sweatshirt are frayed. "Where'd you get that sweatshirt?"

"I borrowed it. From one of my poor friends," he cracks.

"Barney."

He finishes his hot dog, takes another sip of soda. "College."

She raises her eyebrow. It's hard to think of Barney as someone other than the suited monster who she spends so much time with. "You went to college?"

"Uh,  _yeah_. Hard to be this awesome and financially stable without going to college." She snorts mid-sip and cringes. "Ooh, soda up the nose. Bad move, Scherbatsky."

"Yeah, well," she says, pinching the bridge of her nose, "Your fault." He laughs and she grins. Being with him feels a little too comfortable. She licks her lips and smiles at him.  _Oh, God_ , she thinks.


	15. game night

She watches as he downs the shot and sits back down, jaw clenching and unclenching. She slides her hand up to rest on his knee, settles it there as they watch the tape. He closes his eyes as it starts. He never wanted to deal with this. He killed old Barney. Old Barney was never supposed to reappear.

Robin watches as he springs to his feet, jaw still clenched, grabs the tape and slams the door.

"Oh my God," Lily whispers.

"Baby," Marshall replies.

"I know."

" _Baby_."

"McClaren's?" Ted offers.

"I'll meet you guys there," she offers, following that path that Barney's anger carved. She has to find him. She takes a cab to the cigar club and finds him sitting in the corner, smoking a Perdomo Lot 23 Belicoso. She doesn't say anything, just walks and sits next to him.

"Robin."

"You weren't answering your cell phone. We were worried."

"Yeah," he says with a snort of disbelief. "I'm sure that they're incredibly worried about me."

"Look, just come back to McClaren's with me." He doesn't move. "Look, you can milk embarrassing stories out of them." He raises an eyebrow.

"Do tell."

"Only if I get immunity for being the left hand of the Devil."

"Immunity granted. Go." She tells him the elaborate plan. When she finishes, he hands her the cigar. "You get an honorary drag for thinking that up." She takes the cigar from him, breathes in the smoke, hands it back.

"Look," she says, as she exhales the smoke, "I'll go first and then you can come later, so they won't expect anything." She pauses. "They'll probably make fun of you, though." He shrugs.

"I have to run to Shannon's real quick. Keep them at McClaren's." She salutes him. "You're a good bro, Scherbatsky." She smiles.


	16. cupcake

"Dude, get out. Taking off my pants." He calls Robin.

"What's going on, Stinson?"

"Nothing, Scherbatsky. How's the hunt for wedding dresses?"

"We just saw a mullet that morphed into a dress to escape death."

"Ooh, nice."

"How's the suit fitting going?"

"Marshall's uncomfortable with me being in the room while he takes off his pants."

"Weird," she mumbles.

"Scherbatsky, are you  _eating_?"

"Only cake."

" _Cake_?"

"Pastry is not covered under any of the Bro Code bylaws."

("Barney! Dude, these pants are totally choking little Marshall!")

"Was that Marshall yelling in the background?"

("Robin, this dress makes my boobs itch!")

"I don't know. Was that Lily?"

"I don't know."

"You're a cake-eating, lying fiend."

"And you're a womanizing, semi-alcoholic, American…loser."

"That was eloquent."

"Shut up, Barney." ("Ro-bin! I'm stuck! Help!") "I feel a bit like a mom right now," she says with a shudder. "Lily, just hang on a minute!"

"I know how you feel." He catches it a little too late, stops.

"Oh, no, no."

"No, no, we would never—"

"Plus…just no."

"That would just be too weird."

"Yeah. Yeah, no."

"I'm just going to—bye."

"Bye." He hangs up just as Marshall starts to make chimp noises.

 

 


	17. life among the gorillas

"Who bakes  _cupcakes_  for a living?"

He sips at his scotch. "Very few people."

She blows a smoke ring. "I'm just saying, that is not a very difficult way to make a living."

"And you're sure this has nothing to do with Ted?"

"What, Ted?  _No_."

"Scherbatsky, if you're a bad liar, the point is to half-lie so as to make it look vaguely deceptive rather than a full-out twitching of the eye."

"Oh my god, is my eye twitching? I lie to Ted all the time."

"No, but  _man_ , you crack easily under pressure."

"That was not nice."

"I am not the one bashing cupcake bakers."

She sighs. "Fine. Let me have some of your scotch."

"What? You—" She takes it anyway as he squeaks in protest. She downs the rest of his scotch.

"This is nice."

"What, you  _stealing_ my scotch?" A brief lapse of silence. "This  _is_ nice." He watches her, notes her worried expression. He touches her arm, traces small circles. "Don't worry about Victoria, Robin. Long distance relationships never work out."

"Thanks, Barney."

"Besides, you're like a 7 and she's like a 4."

"A 7?"

"The Barnacle has high standards." She rolls her eyes.


	18. nothing good happens after two am

Oh my god, she kissed Ted. While his girlfriend was in Germany. She kissed  _Ted_  while he had a girlfriend. She has officially entered the women's book of deluded mistresses. Or something. She groans and pours herself a glass of wine.

That's the thing about men. She feels a slight urge to call Barney and let him know what happens, but she doesn't. Just drinks her glasses of wine and stares into her dalmation's big brown eyes. At least Barney is up front. He pushes the image of a womanizer. You know what you're getting and hey, sometimes you're pleasantly surprised. (She thinks he still has the monogrammed handkerchief.)

But not Ted. Ted starts out with blue French horns and string quartets and roomfuls of roses and declarations of love and follows it up with, "Oh, yeah, I still have a girlfriend who's learning how to bake cupcakes in Germany." Ted draws you up and lets you fall. She pours another glass. Sometimes, she wonders what it would've been like to go out with Barney. She remembers the tape.

Ted calls and leaves about a thousand messages on her machine. She unplugs it, turns her phone off.

Sometimes, she wonders.


	19. mary the paralegal

It's weird being the friend between two friends who hate each other and love each other at the same time. _Like_. Like each other. And it's especially weird when you like one of them.

He introduced Mary to Ted because, well, Ted was his first bro, and by the bylaws of the Bro Code, he needs to stand by him. And he is.

But Robin is his new bro. And to be honest, she's a better bro than Ted ever was. She plays laser tag, goes with him to the cigar club, suits up. And he kind of likes her in a way that is inappropriate between bros (seriously, Article V, Section IX).

And when Lily lets it slip that Barney's responsible for Mary, she pulls him into the women's restroom ("If you wanted to have sex with me, all you had to do was ask") and yells at him.

"Barney, why the hell would you do that?"

"Ted's my bro."

"I'm your bro too, aren't I?"

"Yeah, but…"

"But what?" ( _But I kind of want to kiss you._ )

"Nothing." She just throws her hands up in disgust and storms out of the bathroom. He sighs. Barney Stinson, always underwhelming.


	20. best prom ever

She walks out and he clicks his tongue against his teeth. "Well, what do you think?"

He hums, low in his throat. "Turn." She spins slowly for him. "Ah, we're getting closer, but still not quite there yet."

She rolls her eyes. "You are just  _loving_ this, aren't you?"

Later, as Lily skips quickly down the stairs with a, "Come on, you guys", he pulls her towards him.

"You look amazing," he says. "If you were a random chick at the bar, I would totally be trying to get into your nonexistent pants right now."

"Yeah, that did the trick."

 

 


	21. milk

She gets a call at midnight that night. "Scherbatsky, what are you doing? I'm sending a car for you."

"What? What?  _What_? Barney, it's midnight."

"Come on. I need your help." So somehow, she is at his office at midnight, looking over blueprints of the office next door. "What do you think?"

"Was your lifelong goal to  _become_ Lex Luthor?"

"Trust me, Butterfield is  _not_ Superman. Or Clark Kent. He's more of a Jimmy."

"You know, I could be like Lois Lane."

"Lois Lane was from Kansas, not Canada. But I can see where you would get the two confused."


	22. come on

Ted sometimes pisses the hell out of him. As much as he likes Ted and likes being friends with Ted, it's moments like these that get him mad. And this moment is pretty much what was going on the  _very first time he met Robin_. It's that look of determination in his eyes, the one that says, "I'm going to make this girl want to marry me even if she doesn't."

But Barney's different. He invented the dating lemon law, for god's sake. If it's not meant to be, if God or the Universe doesn't want it to happen, it  _won't_ happen. And no amount of cheesy romantic gestures will change that. But he can't say that. So he says, "Barring some act of God, Robin  _is_ going on this camping trip." Which, what a stupid thing to say to a guy who seems to never lose hope.

He bites his tongue. He wants Robin too. She's hot, plays laser tag, rules at Battleship. But a rain dance? If it got to this point, he's pretty sure he'd walk away. It hadn't even gotten to that point and he walked away. For Ted. Why doesn't he get this many chances?


	23. where were we?

Marshall calls him up at 2 a.m., and normally, he'd be worried about getting caught trying to sneak out of what's-her-name's apartment, but this time, he's actually sleeping (a meeting with Putin tomorrow, and God knows, that man is not to be trifled with). "What?" he snipes.

"Dude, I got a favor to ask. Come to the shooting range with me?"

"Marshall, it's 2 a.m. Just go to the Bronx."

But Marshall's halfway through a story about how he had a dream about Lily and her in the shower "and dude, her shampoo, she was swimming in it and it smelled like daisies and she was like, 'Marshall, I love you,'" and Barney's already halfway through putting his jeans on.

"Just…shut up about her shampoo. I'm on the way. And I swear to God, if you start talking about her again, they'll never find your body in the Hudson."

"Gotcha."

So they end up at some 24 hr. shooting range pool hall (yes, it is exactly as shady as it sounds) and Marshall's trying to figure out how to load his magazine. Barney sighs, grabs it from him, clicks it in, and shoves it back into his hands.

"What is it with you guys? You and Robin. What were you, raised in Texas or something?"

He rolls his eyes. "What about Robin?"

"Oh, dude, she's the one who totally hooked me onto this in the first place. As like a post-Lily…coping thing. You know?"

He just loads the magazine into his own semi-automatic. "Dude, cope with sex." But that doesn't stop him from thinking about Ted and Robin and the babies he will force her to have. He squints, tilts his head, empties his magazine at the target. The recoil makes his shoulder burn but he's always been a masochist.

" _Dude_."


	24. the scorpion and the toad

_What—What is that thumping noise? Is someone getting whacked? Is this what the sound of someone getting whacked…sounds like? Does Ted live with the mob?_

Halfway towards the door, she trips on the rug (who puts a rug there? That is seriously the most ridiculous place to put a rug, Lily—or…was it her rug?) but crawls to unlock the door. A pair of strong hands come down to encircle her waist, help her up to her feet. She squints. "Barney?"

His lips twitch. "What are you doing on the floor?"

She crosses her arms in defense. "It was comfy."

"Yeah," he says. "I'm sure."

She places her finger up to her lips. "Shh! Lily and Ted are sleeping."

"Is Marshall around?"

She shakes her head, shrugs. "I don't know."

"Scherbatsky, how much did you drink?"

"Oh, a little too much."

"Come on," he says. "You should sleep it off."

"Not tired." She tries to walk, but falls against him instead, head hitting the soft silk of the juncture of his neck and shoulder. He smells of silk and detergent, spiciness and warmth. She hums.

He clears his throat. "I'm going to go…find Marshall."

She doesn't let go. "Okay."


	25. brunch

He should come to expect these jabs at his character, really, but he would be lying to himself if he said that he'd built up a skin against them. It's strange, really--isn't the saying that if you lower someone's expectations, there's nowhere to go but up? He feels like the only exception to the rule.

But he loves pulling out the rug from under them sometimes, seeing the shock on their faces.

Like now. When he backs into Robin just a little and she pushes him forward and he plays the charm card on Ted's parents--the shock on Ted's face totally makes it worth it.

And when Robin pulls him into the kitchen with a facial expression that reads "angry ferret," okay, he'll admit it, part of him loves it.

"Way to wreck the curve, kiss-ass," Robin snipes. He just smirks because, well, this is their big moment, Robin and Ted. It's momentous. And he's ruining it. He's the best friend. He should be supportive, but maybe passive-aggression isn't his strong point. Maybe he just likes to see Robin angry. Maybe Ted gets on his nerves here and there.

Robin's forced smile after the sonata? Icing on the cake.


	26. ted mosby: architect

Okay, this is reaching new levels of ridiculous. Watching someone get dressed should not be so captivating. Seriously. Plus, it's Barney, which is really the cherry on top of this ridiculous, Robin-what-the- _hell_ -are-you-thinking sundae. But the meticulous way he shrugs his shirt on, smooths out the creases--it's like watching him adopt a new personality. When he gets to the cuff links, she's  _gone_.

Lily elbows her in the ribs. "Robin, your mouth."

"Huh?" She clears her throat.

By the time he gets to the letter, she adds an extra dollop of disgust to make up for all the-- well, you know.


	27. world's greatest couple

"Barney, what happened? Lily said she's never going to go back there again."

"And the Fortress of Barnitude is saved. Thank God. She invited herself over, redecorated my apartment, made me stay in on a Friday night and watch  _Letterman_ , and then we just fell asleep!"

"No!"

"It was horrible."

"Barney, you got all the gooey, maple-syrupy, liked-by-Ted aspects of a relationship without the sex!" She laughs. "You totally got played!"

"I know," he grumbles. "Where are you right now anyway?"

"McClaren's. Why? Where are you? Are you still watching Letterman?"

"No." She hums low in her throat as he clicks it off. "All right, fine! But it's Lily's fault." She just laughs. "Where's Ted?"

"At work."

"Want to come over for some scotch and a cigar? I just got in a box of Padrons."

"No sex," she warns.

"I'm pretty sure the Barnacle stays Lily-vaccinated until tomorrow."

"All right. You're on."

Later, when they're sitting on his couch of awesome, Robin accidentally shifts her butt onto the remote. The wall turns on. "Oh my God," she murmurs. "Lily wasn't joking?"

"Who jokes about an illicit Japanese-imported 300 inch plasma screen?"

"Clearly not you." They clink glasses as she squints.


	28. aldrin justice

When everyone heads out, she stays. Heads closer to him, winces. "Does it hurt?"

"What? Throwing out a hip?" She nods. "They've got me on painkillers."

She sits in a chair by the bed. "I can't believe you tried to bag a cougar."

He clears his throat, looks uncomfortable. "Shouldn't you be going with Ted?"

She shrugs. "He and Marshall are going down to the cafeteria. You know how they are." He nods distantly.

"Got a B, though," he says with an uneasy grin. "That's got to be worth something."

She leans towards him and her fingertips trace patterns on his arm. He squirms a little, and she notices the way his eyes start to dart around the room. The way his breathing picks up. He clears his throat, moves again, and this time, the movement startles her.

"I'm going to go find Ted," she says, standing.

"That's a good idea," he murmurs. "With him and his not-best-friend Marshall, they might end up getting arrested for doing things to coma patients."

She rolls her eyes. "Barney."

"What? It could happen." Lily walks in, eyes the both of them.

"Robin?"

"I'm coming."

Later, "Robin, what was that about?" Lily asks.

"Nothing."

 


	29. swarley

He shows up at her apartment later. When she peers through the peephole, she's totally got a new one ready (Swarlito, okay, it's not that good, but she's running out of ideas), but as soon as the hinge cracks, he shoves a bag through the door.

"I have a present for you if you get them to stop calling me Swarley."

"No way, Barney!" she exclaims. "My friendship cannot be had with cheap gifts."

"Tiffany's."

"Ooh. Can I just peek inside the bag first?"

He steps inside, sits on her sofa, dangles the bag in front of her with a grin. "You know you want it." He pauses, tucks the small bag in his inner suit jacket pocket. "And no, no peeking. You have to measure the worth of our friendship." He shrugs. "Carats are a pretty good unit of measure."

"Okay, fine, fine, just--can I?" He hands her the bag. "Half carat Asscher cut earrings." She cracks the box open, gasps.

"Oh, Barney, no, no, I'm sorry, I shouldn't--I can't take this."

He just shrugs. "Already drooled on the diamonds, Scherbatsky. Can't take that back now." He slips out the door before she can say anything else.


	30. atlantic city

Barney holds a bottle of scotch in one hand, absentmindedly shuffles a deck of cards in the other. He drinks straight from the bottle, the amber liquid sometimes sliding past the glass rim to splash onto his hand.

"Barney," Robin starts. "I didn't know you had a gambling problem."

"Uh, that's because I  _don't_ have a gambling problem." He continues to shuffle and her eyes are drawn to his two fingers, slipping over and under and over and under, and she wonders what else they can accomplish. He takes another swig of the scotch. "Want to play poker for the rest of this scotch?"

She rolls her eyes. "You  _do_ have a problem, Barney."

He stops, looks up, holds his hand up. "Wait, Scherbatsky, is that what I—is that  _concern_? Robin, you  _care_ about me."

She rolls her eyes, throws her arms up in frustration. "Oh, oh, no."

"You have a  _crush_ on me," he says with a bright smile. "A big Canadian schoolgirl crush."

"Barney."

"Yeah."

"Yeah, well, at least, I—" she struggles. "Uh-huh, I don't have a crush on  _Keno_. Yeah, that's right,  _Swarley_."

His face darkens. "I thought we were never going to talk about that again."

"That was only last week,  _Swarles_."

He grumbles. "Just stop it."

"Stop gambling first." His mouth twitches in displeasure. "Trust me, with Lily, we could prevent you from getting any woman in New York for  _a year_. You'd have to troll New Jersey and Long Island." She crosses her arms nonchalantly. "So you'll just have to pick which sin you like more."

He rolls his eyes petulantly. "Fine." She holds her hand out, wiggles her fingers.

He hands her the deck of cards before heading to leave. "Uh,  _and_ the ones in your sleeves too."

"Tch. Fine,  _mom_."

 


	31. slap bet

He decides she owes him if he's going to spend the rest of his days being afraid of Marshall's inhumanly large hand. ("Hey, it was  _your_ advice.") So she agrees, albeit warily, to be blindfolded and to go out for an evening on the town with Barney ("But not the meatpacking district again. Last time, I was going to  _kill_ you.") He blindfolds her, leads her into the cab, and doesn't take off the blindfold until they're well into the building.

When the blindfold does come off, however, she looks ready to bolt. She's quite ready to, in fact. It's not a mall, but it's Barney and his stupid intentions.

"Guys," he says as pleasantly and charming as possible into the mic, "this is my fiancée Robin and she used to sing in a band, but she's a little embarrassed. So maybe you guys could clap or do whatever it is you do?" And because it's Koreatown on a Friday night, most of the people are drunk and more than a little ready to applaud. Robin is throwing daggers at his testicles with her eyes.

The man hands her the second mic and blocks the exit of the stage and when the music gets piped through, she swears (if she hasn't said this a thousand times already), she is going to  _kill_ Barney Stinson with her bare hands and bury parts of him in her favorite parts of Canada and the Hudson.

" _'Cause baby, there ain't no mountain high enough_ ," he sings at her with perfectly arched eyebrows and pretty even tone and it makes her giggle halfway through and someone's holding up a lighter in the middle of the audience (oh, no, no, the waitress shut it down – fire hazard) and she has to admit that she's having a bit of fun.

So when they go up the second time and she picks  _You're the One that I Want_ and Barney does a little dance move and she laughs so hard her lungs feel like they're collapsing, it makes sense that she kisses his cheek.

It makes sense.

Because there was just too much soju in the air and it has nothing to do with the way her heart beats just a little too fast. It's just adrenaline. From the karaoke. And the soju in the air. Yeah. That's it.

She was in denial before, didn't feel like this.


	32. single stamina

He picks up his nephew (he's an  _uncle_  now. God, that still feels strange) and turns him to face the crowd, plops him in his lap. "Baby," he says. "We're going to be able to do a lot of good things together." The baby just coos at him. "When you're older and I tell all the other old fogies at my retirement home about how  _awesome_ I was, you can back that story up." He picks his nephew up, lifts him up and down and up and down until he starts giggling again.

The baby pulls at the collar of his suit, so he tugs on the baby's tie. "Not nice to mess with a man's suit, nephew baby. That's life lesson number one that Uncle Barney taught you before your daddy did." He grins, still rocking the baby.

And when he stops, the baby points, his fingers settling on Robin, sitting and chatting with Lily.

"Baby," he says, surprised. "You've got good taste!"

The baby chews on his own fist.

"You see that girl?" he asks Nephew Awesome. "Your Uncle Barney might like that girl. What do you think?"

He sucks his thumb.

Barney turns back. "Yeah, me too."

 


	33. how lily stole christmas

When he's sick and in Ted's bed, she has to admit that part of the appeal is that he looks like a beaten down puppy. But when she brings him soup and his hands skim down her sweater-clad arm, she rolls her eyes, bites on her cheek.

Drugs him both to stop his whining and because the idea of caring for  _anyone_ still makes her skin a little itchy, but it scares her how _comfortable_ it is for someone who's so uncomfortable.

She needs to soak in Lifetime, start to hate it again. Before she becomes one of their movies.


	34. first time in new york

She catches him in an alley by McClaren's later that night, cigarette caught between the fingers. He exhales a huge cloud into her face and she smells the menthol.

"What can I say?" he says, flask in one hand and cigarette in the other and she doesn't need to smell it to guess that it's scotch. What  _can_ he say? She knows he's collected all these self-destructive habits over the years and he never lets anybody see them. He works as— _hell_ , no one even knows what his  _job_ is, not even Marshall, who worked with him. He's an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma or something – she can't quite remember, the smoke has made her memories hazy.

"Come on," she says, reaching to tug at his sleeve. That's when she notices that he doesn't have a suit on – he must have changed. He looks regular, almost forgettable in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt with a coffee stain by the hip. His hair is disheveled from him running his hands through it and he smells more like trucking from New Jersey than penthouse in Manhattan. "Coffee?"

"Just let me finish." And he inhales the dregs of the cigarette, the ashes smoldering and flicking off and blowing away in the wind, and she thinks there's something so unnatural about him smoking cigarettes in an alleyway. He should be suited up, sitting in leather, surrounded by rarities, smoking cigars. He is ostentatious, charismatic,  _big_  – not… _this_.

But he's always been isolated, she thinks, in his own way, and there's nothing about the word "first" that makes it inclusive in any way.

He flicks the stub off into a dark corner and tosses the flask into a nearby litterbin. She's never realized quite how disposable his life is.


	35. columns

It's so Barney to get something like a portrait done.

The thought is so  _un_ surprising that she's a little surprised that she thinks about it so much.

It hits her at the weirdest times, like when she's lathering her hair. She starts thinking about Dorian Gray and whether Barney's painting will age while he stays forever young and forever a player.

But there's something in her that can see an aged Barney as good too, almost like wine. Gray that soaked in at the temples and became silver as it traced the lines so many fingertips followed in previous decades.

She feels like he'd almost be like George Clooney – just grow old and still have the rugged youthfulness but with gray in his hair and wrinkles in his skin. (Did she just compare Barney to George Clooney? Really? Well, now that she thinks about it – no,  _stop_ , Robin, don't get carried away.)

She  _has_ to stop thinking about this damned painting.

To be honest, it wasn't that great (she loves Lily, but the next Van Gogh, she definitely is not – besides, who would aspire to be a tortured artist who cuts their own ear off as an  _apology_?).

 _Stop_ , Robin.


	36. monday night football

He and Robin have a Superbowl dance. There's shuffling, a high-five, low-five, and a non-sexual chest bump. Of course, the knowledge that he lost a shitload of money tonight is still in the back of his mind, but Robin gets so into football that he can't help but be excited too.

Near the end of the game, Robin slings an arm over his shoulder.

He twitches away from her in annoyance. She doesn't let go, pulls him closer, sings half a verse of "Let's Go to the Mall" to him. He peers over at her, smiles. "Thanks."

"No problem, bro."


	37. lucky penny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously set before the MTA scrapped the W line.

He calls her from the subway, having given up on Ted long ago. She rescues him, running with Marshall towards the W because it's like 2 in the morning and the W is shady in the  _day_.

"They took my medal," he grumbles as she and Marshall struggle to lift his weight.

"Who?"

"These kids from Jamaica."

"Dude," Marshall intones. " _Jamaica_? You should be lucky they didn't kill you." He leans a little more on Robin, but they're heading towards the cab and they're almost there.

"Are you feeling okay?" Robin asks.

"Yeah, dude," Marshall adds. "I'm sorry. I didn't think this would happen, but you were the one who wanted to finish!"

"Almost there," Robin pants, beginning to groan under his weight.

He sighs, looks off to the side. "Thanks, guys."

Later, Marshall bails and Robin and  _his doorman_ have to get him up to his apartment. His arms are starting to hurt from being supported, but he shuts up because it can't be half of what  _they're_ feeling for supporting him. Thank God his building has elevators.

By the time, they plop him down on the sofa, the doorman pops out with a nod of the head and Robin sits down next to him, grasping for a bottle of water.

"There's a secret stash of groceries behind the fridge," he says. "And if you tell Lily, I'll kill you as soon as I get feeling in my legs again."

She chuckles, grabs a huge bottle of Gatorade and heads back to the sofa. She hands it to him and he opens it without breaking a sweat, handing it back. He takes a long swig. She caps it, sets it on the floor. "Will you be okay?" He nods.

(She doesn't leave that night, but they don't tell anyone.)

 


	38. stuff

When Robin and Ted announce that they're moving in together, his head falls naturally into his hands because it's happening. All those years of false prophesying and it's finally happening – he's alone. Everyone has paired up. Now he'll be tied up in petty arguments about laundry detergent and Swiffers and have to endure more PDA.

The thing is they didn't even notice. Relationships give people blinders. So when Robin bumps into him sliding in the booth, he makes the table wobble when he finishes draining his tumbler.

It's transference of motion. Potential to kinetic. There's no movement after this anyway.


	39. arrivederci fiero

Robin calls him out to Brooklyn one Saturday ("You gave me a surprise, now it's your turn."), blindfolds him, spins him around three times ("Scherbatsky, this is not pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey at your twelve-year-old cousin's bat mitzvah.") and leads him out to the car. They drive around for a bit, and when the blindfold comes off, he screams.

"No, no, no, no. This cannot be happening. No. No, no, no." He turns to look at her. "Scherbatsky, you're not  _serious_ , are you?  _No_. No. No way. Nope." She dangles the key in front of him. "No. No, no, no. This is going to be  _horrible_."

"Oh, come on, Barney."

"You're not even qualified to teach this. You're from  _Canada_."

"We drive in Canada."

"Yeah, but aren't the steering wheels on the right side? Don't you drive on the left?"

"Uh, not since 1910, no. But don't worry. I'm not that old." She grins. "Life experience, Barney."

"I've had enough life experience. I've had so much I could base a reality show off of how much life experience I've had – train 16 young impressionable girls to try and be as experienced in life as I am."

She rolls her eyes. "Barney, key in the ignition."

He grimaces, but manages to start the car. "All right, Ls with the hands." He thrusts his arms out, hands flexed, palms directly in front.

Robin just gapes. "What did Ted  _do_ to you? Okay, look. Accelerator is the skinny pedal on the right. Brake is on the left. Gear shift. You're only just starting out, so P is parking, D is drive, R is reverse." Barney's eyes still look like they're bulging out of their sockets though, so she adds, "Reverse is a grown-up word for  _backwards_."

He rolls his eyes and she feels a little more at ease. "Very funny." She shrugs.

"I thought so. Now drive up to that stop sign right there and stop." He steps on the pedal. "You can step on it a little bit harder. We're only going like 25 kilometers an hour."

"We're  _New York_ ," he says, a bit agitated. "We don't use metric."

"You have the speedometer right in front of you!"

Two-and-a-half hours later, he's comfortable enough to drive around the block like a regular person. Robin cracks her knuckles and feels accomplished. Barney parks the car and tries not to throw up or have a panic attack.

 


	40. moving day

Ted and Robin have engaged in some kind of strange, ritualistic murder-suicide pact. That is the only way to explain it. And the only way to prevent this from happening is to hijack the moving truck.

Granted, he hasn't thought much beyond that but he figures it'll work itself out. Somehow. He's always been one for thinking on his feet.

The thought of double-bonding bubbles in his throat. He is like carbon monoxide, stealing and stealing and killing. And some small part of him wants to sabotage this moving thing for reasons other than upholding of the bro code.

Shit.


	41. bachelor party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French courtesy of whatever I could google. Don't shout.

She doesn't return the camisole. And, of course, Barney, of all people, comes over one night (how does this happen so often?) and sees it on top of her pile of clean laundry. He gasps.

" _Scherbatsky_." He lifts it up gently. "You  _kept_ it?"

"I like it," she defends.

He smirks. "Try it on for me."

"What?" She snatches it from his hands. "Why?"

"Please," he says with a practiced roll of the eyes and a half-sigh. "Nothing I haven't seen before. And plus, with that relic, not like I'll see anything but your shoulders anyway."

"It's see through."

"So wear a tank top underneath.  _God_ , Robin, did you  _not_ get the preteen's manual on how to wear sleazy things and still walk out the door? Or don't they have that in French-Canadian?"

" _Va te faire foutre_!"

He just shrugs, reaches for her  _Us Magazine_. " _Ça ne vaut pas le coup de fouetter un chat pour ça_."

She stops and gapes at him for a moment. " _Je suis impressionné_." Sighing, she heads into her bedroom to change. When she walks out, he trains his face to remain impassive and as she heads back to change again, he exhales.

" _Moi aussi_."

 


	42. showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> french courtesy of google. don't trust it.

It's funny how Barney never forgets a story. Or a friend. He didn't give all his prizes to Lily and Marshall, though they  _did_ get most of them (and Robin suspects that's because he's a closet romantic, though she'd never say that to his face).

He gave Ted a rod and tackle box ("I told him about how my Uncle John took me out fishing on my fifteenth birthday," Ted says to her later. "Just…even  _I'd_ forgotten that story."). And her?

He gives her a set of matryoshka dolls and when she takes them apart, she finds a slip of paper inside the smallest doll. Fishes it out, unrolls it.  _  
_

_Dis-moi qui tu hantes, je te dirai qui tu es. Tu es genial!_

So when Barney leaves his jacket at her apartment, she writes a little note of her own.

_Barney, je suis ton père. Bien à vous, Bob Barker_.

She sends the suit out to be dry-cleaned and pays the woman extra to pin the note on the lapel after it's cleaned and before it's delivered.

He sends her a bouquet of unnaturally-colored carnations with a note ( _Que la force soit avec toi. Bien à vous, Han Solo_.) and they gradually get more ridiculous from there until the whole thing has practically escalated into a carrier pigeon fight.

Ted watches the thing with a kind of agitated passivity. "French? First of all, how does  _Barney_ know French? Know what? I don't want to know." He pauses. "I didn't know you knew French."

"When I was first starting out, we lived in Quebec for a long time. A  _long_  time."

Ted just shrugs and heads after Marshall to go play football in Central Park. But she knows he's not comfortable with it. He's never really trusted Barney with this, she supposes, always had his guard up whenever girlfriends were around, always suspicious.

But for all his bad feelings, Barney's been a really good friend to him, excepting the practical joke wars that go on and on and sometimes are halfway malicious. But he never forgets birthdays, always thinks out his gifts, does something special.

So with their new French battle, she's not quite sure what'll happen on her birthday this year. She finds a bubble-wrap package in her office at Metro News, closes the door, pops it in the VCR.

It's Barney, in drag, imitating her, lip-syncing to Eve Angeli's French cover of "Let's Go to the Mall." She laughs so hard she cries.

At the end, a black-and-white image of Barney in drag (seriously, did he shave his legs? Because that's commitment.) pops up and words scroll across. She follows his directions, hands flying beneath her desk to pull a box taped to the underside free. She pops it open at the hinge, finds a charm bracelet, a scrap of paper looped through it. She pulls it out, places it on her desk, tries to flatten it so she can read it.

_Voici façon de regarder à te, gosse_.

 


	43. something borrowed

"I can't believe you cried."

They're sitting in the hallway of this mansion, drinking the leftover champagne flutes and talking. She offers him her makeshift handkerchief. "Uh, no," he says with a jittery shake of the head. "I find that wiping my nonexistent tears on Lily's  _underwear_ a little weird."

"You?" she says, tilting her head to the side. "Really? Mr. Ten Way?"

"Well, I did just marry a couple today," he says, his voice drifting off in awe. He clears his throat. "I am still connected to God. It'd be weird."

Robin blinks a few times. "Yeah. I guess."


	44. something blue

He goes through the motions with Ted on that balcony, smoking cigars and drinking scotch, doing that whole spiel, but he's really running through his plans for what to do later with Robin because she's really the true bro here, even though he came first. But he is not a tree, he is no one's territory to mark, he picks and chooses his own.

Later that night, he shows up at her apartment with an advance copy of Red Steel and a Wii, sets it up on her TV. "What is this?" she asks. And just like he seeped into every pore of her, he wedges himself behind her TV, as medium-sized and practical as it is, dust flying as he deals with cables.

"Uh, trust me," he says, with a grunt as he finishes plugging in the proper cables. "This is proper break-up therapy."

"I already went to the shooting range today," she says, rolling her shoulder.

"But this is so much more satisfying. Come on, simulated blood and guts? You'll  _love_ it." She clicks her tongue against her teeth, shrugs nonchalantly.

But three hours later, she's picked up an additional three books of budo and the Wiimote is starting to make her arm cramp but there's such satisfaction in stabbing some random ninja in the chest (she doesn't imagine it to be Ted, doesn't hold resentment like this).

Barney's a little in awe at how intense she gets ("Scherbatsky, you're seriously breaking into a sweat here.") but for his part, he doesn't say anything. Later, as she basks in the adrenaline rush, she nestles her head against her shoulder.

"Thanks, Barney." He just strokes her hair behind her ear, brushes her hair away from her neck, keeps his fingertips always just barely there against her skin.

And before she knows it, she's sniffling and it's opening up a torrent of new emotions that she thought she closed. She cries against his shoulder until he has a wet patch against his shoulder, but he doesn't say anything. Just keeps the pads of his fingers against her skin, barely there, barely there.

And it's so different from Ted's suffocating presence, so different and yet not. She breathes him in and hopes he doesn't change her blood chemistry (though he probably already has – so much of their friendship is based on controlled substances anyway).

"It's okay," he says. But it's not.

 


	45. wait for it

He watches Robin watch Male Gail with this look of admiration, like he's Lassie reincarnate and saves puppies and kittens in his spare time (which, whatever, no one is that good; he'll figure out male gail's dirty secret, always does). He texts Robin later that night with an invite to a Laser Tag tournament, but  _no_ , apparently male Gail is techno-savvy enough to say that he's volunteered him and Robin to help at the animal shelter (he hopes she doesn't start flinging paint at rich socialites).

 _Robin is such a kind-hearted person and the puppies will really appreciate what she does. She will help me help the less fortunate, and I hope you will understand, Mr. Stinson_.

He wants to text back,  _What the hell are you doing with Robin's phone, you Argentinian goat farmer?,_ but he doesn't.

When Robin stares at Gael again the next time they go out, he clenches his jaw. This has nothing to do with his feelings toward Robin (wait, feelings? He has no feelings beyond the friendly). Denial is a game all too familiar to him these days.

Gael and Robin go to get the next round. "Male Gail needs to go," he says.


	46. we're not from here

Gael is supposed to meet her here.

She brings her photo album, shows all of the things she did in Argentina that made her happy and made her feel like she contributed to the world.

"I've evolved," she tells them. But she watches Barney swirl his scotch in the tumbler and feels bits and pieces of her old self push up through her skin.

"You haven't  _changed_ , Scherbatsky," he says, as if it were the easiest lesson ever. And he places his arm on the back of the booth, leans in enough to be intimidating, surrounds her. "You're a sophisticated, scotch-swilling, cigar-smoking, red-meat-eating, gun-toting New Yorker. What you are not is a massage-giving, windsurfing, bongo-playing, teetotaling, vegan peacenik hippie like your soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend Gael."

She forgot how nice he smells.  _Whoa, Robin_ , she thinks.  _Back to thinking totally inappropriate thoughts?_ She sighs and Lily warns of Gael's entrance.  _Thank God he's back_.

But when he slides in the booth and Barney sits at the front of the table, she feels a small pang of loss. Gael doesn't know how to slide in the booth, how to maintain the right level of friction.

She finds herself wishing that Barney's rule is right.


	47. third wheel

He visits her at the hospital, but it's hard to stop from breaking out into laughter. "You tried to shave your legs with  _butter_?"

"That waitress was evil. She stole my date! Who does that?"

He arches an eyebrow, seating himself by the bed. "I would."

"Tch." She sighs and shifts a little, her ill-fitting hospital gown shifting with her movement. "And I got a scar." She pouts.

"Baby." She throws her head back against the pillow and turns to look at him. "Let me see it."

She pushes aside some of the sheets, shows him her left leg. He moves his finger along the thin line and she inhales sharply. He looks at her, surprised.

"That didn't hurt, did it?" She just shakes her head. She suddenly feels dizzy; her head spins and she feels lightheaded. He doesn't stop tracing the scar with his fingertip. As if suddenly aware of his actions, he pulls his hand away, adjusts the knot of his tie. "How long do you have to stay?"

"Not too long," she says. "They want to keep me for observation for my concussion, but that's it. I should be able to go back to work in a day or two."

"I brought you porn," he says, heaping a stack of Playgirls on her bed. She rolls her eyes.

"Barney, this looks like '70s porn."

"Sorry, Scherbatsky," he says with a click of the tongue. "It seems like porn for women never really entered that era of airbrushing like regular porn." She grimaces.

"The thought counts, I guess."

"Battleship?"

"You have Battleship?"

"Travel Battleship," he concedes. "Not the same, but…"

"Set it up." He does so.

"A9," she tries. "Now what is this I hear about Ted and a tricycle?"

"Miss."

"Of course."

He leaves two hours later.

 


	48. little boys

She calls him later. "Seriously, though, Barney. What's my 'but'?"

He fires a couple of laser tag shots. "Oh, come on, Gunther," he shouts, in German. "You know I hit you. Do you want me to tell your mom?" Robin clears her throat. "But you're Canadian."

"That's it?" And Barney has to wonder. Maybe property lines are a weak excuse to not date somebody. All in all, she's pretty awesome, but the fact that he can't find  _anything wrong with her_ wriggles its way under his skin and makes him pretty uncomfortable.

"Yeah. Scherbatsky, I think that's a crime that pretty much explains itself."

"Ugh. Fine."


	49. how i met everyone else

He narrows his eyes when she first starts spouting "no." He can't be  _that_ bad of a catch. Yeah, he womanizes but, come on, she's seen the tape. And after a year of being bros and six months of being best friends, she can't possibly think that he's a horrible human being.

But she keeps going, and his mental count is nearing double digits, and he wonders what she really thinks about him. Is she just friends with him to avoid whatever he might say about her?

When she finishes, he tilts his head at her. "Sixteen No's. Really?" And she shrugs in apology, but it still stings. The one woman he considers special enough to be a bro (and to  _not_ use) thinks he's a sleaze. Which, fine, okay, but she should know him better.

When he gets the next round of drinks, the thought ferments in his head – if they've been friends for so long, there should be no reason for her to be so suspicious. He can be a good friend. Halfway through her beer, she glances over and he knows she knows he's upset. For his part, he doesn't say anything, just sips at his scotch, purses his lips, occasionally quips at Ted about crazy Blah-Blah. (What kind of name is that anyway?)

Later that night, she tries to appease him. Cigar club? Laser tag? How about The Lusty Leopard? She even offered to treat him to a lap dance. But he didn't even twitch, just glanced down at the floor, looked dejected and shuffled out. "Barney," she says, trailing after him as he walks down the block. "Barney, I'm sorry."

"No," he says, turning to face her. "Why should you be sorry? I'm just your sleazy bro, right?" And she flinches because yeah, that was kind of a low blow.

She sighs. "Come on," she says, trying to infuse enthusiasm into her voice. "Laser Tag? I hear the sound of twelve-year-old prepubescents challenging us."

He hails a cab. "Scherbatsky, we're good. I'm just…tired."

And she bites her lip, still feeling like a playground bully.

He calls Vickie Mendoza later that night, buys a bottle of tequila. They do shots and it leads to messy sex on the floor. He leaves a bruise on her hip and she leaves scratches on his back and it almost feels like closure. "You can let yourself out," he says, heading for his bedroom. They've been on-again, off-again fuck buddies since forever. She's already buttoning her shirt. She knows the drill and even if she doesn't, she's crazy enough not to care.

"You're still an asshole," she murmurs, "but damn if you aren't an amazing fuck." She slams the door on her way out. He lies still in bed, blinking slowly as he observes the ceiling. He still feels empty and he wonders if the one woman he needs to change that will ever let herself be weak for a moment.

Fuck, he thinks. He just admitted he  _needs_ her.


	50. i'm not that guy

She leans on the back paneling of the booth, and he kind of wishes that she'd just slide in and sit down next to him. But as he looks up at her and then at Lily, he admires the lines that she draws against the air, the figure she holds (does this count as ogling? Because Barney Stinson doesn't ogle).

She leans in to advise Lily and they share a look, waiting for Lily to spill her advice.

The air between them feels charged and it makes him feel warm.

He takes another sip of his scotch. She walks away.


	51. dowisetrepla

The cigar smoke slides down easily, and as he hoots at her, he smells her shampoo coupled with these Cubans and he smiles out of habit. It smells like…comfort. But he crinkles his nose because he hasn't thought those types of thoughts since…well… _the Nicaragua incident_.

She slaps the money into his hand so hard, he swears she gives him a bruise. But he smiles. She rolls her eyes as Ted comes in with the beers. When they clink bottles, he tucks the cash into his jacket pocket. It feels like promise, like a new beginning.

"To us," he says.

"Us."


	52. spoiler alert

Halfway through Cathy's discussion of why she thinks Lorax is a weird word, Robin, like the savior she is, pulls a pen from her purse and surreptitiously starts writing on a napkin. She pushes it towards him with her fingertips just as his eyes start to roll back into his head (seriously, he did not know anybody human could speak so much).

_I can haz death?_

He stifles a laugh.  _Zs instead of Ss. Nice, Scherbatsky_. Except her last name is kind of just a scribbled mess because napkins are not that wide.

_Lorax, bad. Lasagna, good_.

_Actually, the Lorax was good. The Onceler was bad._

_How do you know this?_

_Uh, because I was once a kid? And didn't tour Canadian malls singing bad songs?_

_In my defense, I was 12._

_Well, now you def. can haz awesome._

_I'm glad you broke grammar laws for me._

_Only you, Scherbatsky._

By the end, they've covered the entire napkin in blue pen and Cathy's left for the bathroom, so now Lily's eyeing them strangely and Ted clears his throat with the look of an angry schoolteacher.

"Guys, seriously. Be nice!"

He and Robin share a look. They try not to laugh.

 


	53. slapsgiving

"You guys  _slept together_ last night?"

The words ring in his head, make him feel dizzy, and he loosens his tie because it feels warm and, yeah, he's totally gotten over this, really. Except he still feels pain burning low in his belly and it's a strange feeling of…almost loss. Except she was never his to lose.

One step forward, two steps back. Male Gail and the shit storm that was Ted and Robin and are they or aren't they soulmates?

He sighs, almost feels like a marionette pulling himself up by his shoulders, elbows, holds his hand up. "Relapse five!" Ted rolls his eyes.

And it makes him wonder why he does this, why he's friends with people who expect him to be a killer of children or something. It's always been like this – he's always inspired low expectations. It's like a record skipping – he's definitely thought these thoughts before. "That's where we high-five, and it's awkward for a moment, and then we high-five again!"

It's almost Gatsby-like, this  _obsession_ he has. I mean, she's with Ted,  _been_ with Ted. He should move on. But no, he keeps changing, changing. One day he'll end up shapeless. Shapeless and alone.


	54. the yips

After her workout, in the locker room, as she showers, she feels a wave of annoyance slowly wash over her. Yeah, okay, so maybe she's more fit than they're using to seeing, but all the jokes were beginning to grate on her. Now she knows how Barney feels. So she spends the extra time uber-glamming up. Maybe she'll wave her fingers at Ted as she leaves with her hair blown-dry to perfection and lip gloss on. That'll show him.

Except, when she leaves, she passes by Barney on the treadmills. He's swapped his suit for a more practical wifebeater and shorts, his earbuds are in. She stops for a minute, watches his feet crash down on the treadmill with thumping intensity. A girl beside her elbows her. "Incredible, isn't he?"

"What?"

She looks like a twenty-year-old Paris Hilton wannabe. "He's, like, the hottest guy here."

She feels her mouth running dry. She needs to escape this weird nexus of, like, feminist empowerment drainage. She's headed for Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan idolatry next and there's no way she's prepared for that. She takes a few steps away. "No, uh, that's—that's my friend, Barney." The other girls in the line (there's  _other girls in a line_?) gawk at her.

"You  _know_ him? Like, oh, my god, you are  _so_ lucky."

"I'm really not," she replies, offhandedly. "I mean, it's just…"

The girl cracks her gum in expectation, lowers her Dior sunglasses. " _Oh_  my God, have you slept with him?" She hears whispers down the line, feels a bit like this is Team Whisper Down the Alley, and she's losing badly.

That's when Barney stops running, pulls his earbuds out, looks up, and sees her. He grins. "Scherbatsky!"

The other girls gawk at her. He gives them a wink. "Hey, Barney."


	55. the platinum rule

It feels like Barney's his dad, yelling at him for whatever. (Except it's just a date with Stella. Which,  _come on_.) Marshall and Lily sit on the sofa, passively watching the train wreck.

"Ted," Barney hums. "Ted, Ted, Ted, Ted, Ted." Ted rattles off an excuse about being adults and mature, blah, blah, blah.

"You have a  _butterfly tramp stamp_ ," Robin says.

Barney runs through his argument before he turns back to Robin, looking her up and down, before hissing, "Submission." Ted shudders. It feels like that time he caught his parents—

You know what? Let's leave it at that.


	56. no tomorrow

He calls Robin for brunch.

"What's the occasion?"

"St. Patty's Day, loser."

"Uh-huh. And you just came from?"

"A dumpster."

"Oh, nice."

"Brunch?"

They meet up in Soho, at this brunch place that Barney suggested (which, hey, he offered to pay, and knowing his taste, she's not going to turn that down). He smells kind of like a dumpster but the wait staff know him by name (and have a suit on hand) and by the time he's done changing in the bathroom, he looks pretty normal. Everything feels pretty normal. Except she's pretty sure the waitresses are all glaring at her.

She stabs a piece of her Challah French toast as he takes another bite of his home fries. "How was your St. Patrick's Day?" he asks.

"I ended up playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos with Lily and Marshall in their crooked apartment."

"Oh, nice." They high five and she makes his fingers sticky (maple syrup).

"I hear you Barnified Ted."

Barney casts his eyes down. "What exactly did you hear?" She shrugs. "Ted does what he does. I told him to live. I'm not his fucking dad."

She licks her lips. "You don't have to defend yourself to me."


	57. ten sessions

He takes Ted's ten session challenge upon himself. For the first week, he invites Robin to laser tag, tries to touch her as much as possible (which sounds dirtier than it ended up being, unfortunately).

By the end of the second week, Robin leans against him as they laugh at Ted. This…is a start. It's a weak start (c'mon, why is their every interaction viewed through the Ted lens?), but it's still a start.

Third week, Robin admits that sometimes a no can become a yes. Score one for the Barnacle. Sort of.

Week four (and seriously, this is starting to feel like he's on Jenny Craig), their visit to the cigar club is a little strange. It's pretty secluded (the stock market is down – people are swilling scotch at the Stock Exchange tonight) and the lighting is dim. The light bounces off her face and he leans in close, feels the urge to kiss her. She pulls away last second, shakes a little (but he pretends not to notice).

Fifth week, she invites him to breakfast after one of her all night girlfriend post-breakup help sessions that usually involve way too much rum. She's definitely hungover and he can't help but smile when she chugs her gross hangover remedy with a wince. She wipes her mouth, bites into a pancake, smiles back.

Week six, he asks her to meet him early at McClaren's. She gets a girly drink and he gets a scotch and they sit and talk. She asks if he's consistently getting laid. He returns the question, but her asking piques his interest.

By the seventh week, she shows up at his office one night ("You didn't show up at the bar, we got worried.") with a box of Thai takeout. They eat in the light of his office over important briefs that she's not allowed to read. She checks out the inspirational poster he had made – he's glad she likes it.

Eighth week, they go out to a movie. It's so astoundingly conventional and normal, they both sit straight-backed and awkward through the whole thing.

On week nine, he's so exhausted from their constant meetings with Russia and Finland that he can barely keep his eyes open. He manages to text an apology before he passes out.

Their last "session," he sits a few minutes in the bar booth after everyone else leaves. But Robin comes back. Gives him a hug, whispers something against his shoulder. And then, whether it be alcohol or just Ted's spirit of monogamy, she leans in and their lips touch for a second. He can barely comment on how soft they are when she's gone, breezed out of the door like a zephyr, leaving him there, her perfume still clinging to the fibers of his suit, his drink still against his knuckles.

It's so surprising that she's the one to run – surprising and yet, not. She'd be the one afraid of it all, but he still can't collect his thoughts. "Huh."

 


	58. the bracket

She looks through his scrapbook of shame, tries to rationalize the kiss to herself.  _How the hell did it not go further?_ "Well," she says, with a harsh exhale, "any girl who does this or that with Barney knows what she's getting herself into."

He shrugs, steps a little into her space until it feels like a dialogue between the two of them.

"Anything that girl and I do is strictly between me and her." He arches a brow, makes big gestures with his hands. "And you guys."

She crosses her arms, looks pleased. "I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner."


	59. the chain of screaming

She calls him later that night. "Shotgun for eternity's been revoked by God."

"Uh, you wish."

"What are you talking about? Ted returned the car."

"Since Ted aspires to be a  _soccer mom_ , this just means that I've got shotgun in his Chrysler minivan ten years down the line."

"And you want shotgun in a minivan?"

"Scherbatsky, are you still eating your ice cream cone?"

"It was big."

"That's what she said." She sighs.

"I did walk into that one."

" _Yeah_ , you did."

"Shotgun for eternity squared!"

"Oh, come on. What are you, seven?"

"Oh, please. Like you're any better."


	60. sandcastles in the sand

It's when his hand goes up to cup her cheek that he knows. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. He knows that he is  _fucked_. And not in the fun way. In the monogamous, Ted way. He loves this girl. He loves her. And if he had any doubt about it before (he didn't), he wouldn't after he pulled away and asked her if she still wanted to keep going.

Barney Stinson doesn't do those kinds of things (often. He only does it for the women who matter).

"Are you—Are you sure?" Because he is. He's  _gone_. She nods.


	61. the goat

Of course. Of  _fucking_ course.

This kind of shit always happens to him. Always. Without fail. Because he's Barney Stinson and God has decided that He, in his infinite power and wisdom, doesn't like Barney Stinson who grew up on Staten Island Boulevard with dreams of growing big and rich and powerful and loved. He sits in the limo, bangs his head against the soft leather of the seat.

He needs to go somewhere else, think about someone else. And he can't go to Vegas. Under any circumstances. The NGC has his picture.

Robin, for her part, gets to escape. She has no guilt, no qualms – it barely took her half a second to decide that she didn't want to acknowledge that this happened at all. And she broke their rule. She told Ted without telling him that she told Ted. But nobody owes him anything. He's Barney – he doesn't get hurt, doesn't bleed like a regular human being. Maybe he's being melodramatic, but all in all, it still feels like he got fucked with his pants on.

He goes home. Goes to sit with his mother and play Monopoly, thinking back on times he wished that secondhand play money was real money. His mother pours him a cheap liquor and he's not surprised that she still keeps that kind of crap around the house. He downs a shot. "Mom, if you want some…ugh…better stuff, I can always get you some."

She puffs away at her cigarette. "It's all right, Barn'."

He always goes and does this – he invented the hot/crazy scale for a reason. He practically  _invites_ the hot/crazy scalers to come and wreak havoc on him. Robin Scherbatsky should get her own line. But no, if all ends badly (as is wont), he'll just end up repressing it all, just like with Shannon. (It's taken him about ten years to admit that she existed so he figures that's a step in the right direction.)

Later that night at dinner, when he's halfheartedly pushing his peas around his plate, his mom asks him what's up. She takes a spoonful of baked potato. "Is it a girl?" And if this were some kind of after school special, he'd say something like, "Isn't it always?" Permanently coupled with a small sigh. But it isn't an after school special so he just mumbles something around his peas. "I hope she's worth it."


	62. rebound bro

To be honest, she does feel a little guilty for leaving him out in the cold when she's been basking in the mutual affection of Marshall, Lily, Ted, and Stella. He's out with his Rebound Bro, who, frankly, seems like he needs help to be a human being before true broness can be reached.

She says she's there to help him out, but really, she hopes that they can patch up what they had. Sleeping with friends is always complicated, but with Barney, even more so. It feels deeper than that.

They wander around Midtown. He buys her a flower.


	63. everything must go

When Robin sees him later, he's still bedecked in baby blue cashmere and Abby. She does a double take. " _Barney?_ "

"Honey, who's this?" the girl at his side drawls.

"Scherbatsky, this is Abby. Abby, this is my bro, Robin."

"She's a really pretty bro." Abby extends a hand (while Robin mouths "Stella's crazy receptionist?" to him) with a wary glance. "What does that mean exactly?" She shakes her hand. "Barney and I are engaged!"

"What?" Robin's mouth goes dry. "What? What? You're what?"

"Yeah, I proposed tonight." (He mouths "Practical joke.")

"Oh, well, congratulations!"

"Thanks!" Abby squeezes his arm and tugs him off towards Ikea. Robin feels her heart do a strange thudding in her chest, and it kind of feels like the pre-Ted pining period, but that couldn't be what it is. After all, it's Barney. They're just friends. And he's got a fiancée. They're going shopping for furniture. It should make her feel settled. But it makes her feel messy, like a pile of leaves someone's jumped into. Ted and Stella, Marshall and Lily, Barney and Abby—as fake as it may be, it still makes her feel strangely alone. Like a sailboat in a sea of anchors.

 


	64. miracles

Sometimes, something happens to change your total outlook on everything. And that, well, that was the accident for him. He's never really come close to dying, always thought himself too young or something (too healthy?), but his blind love for Ted almost got him killed. And in the moment he got hit, there wasn't some bright light or long tunnel, but just moments—flashes of his life that were memorable.

His mom taking time off work to bake cookies with him and James.

James taking him to the mall to cruise for chicks (or, in retrospect, guys).

Meeting Robin. Playing laser tag with Robin. Playing Battleship, smoking cigars, the freeze-frame high five, kissing her, having sex with her—it all led him to one big realization. Holy shit, a lot of those pre-death flashes involved  _Robin_. Which tells him that this is way beyond infatuation. He's in love with her.

He is in love with a woman he can't (or shouldn't) have with Hallmark cards, Lifetime movies,  _Meg Ryan_ , all of it, for god's sake. He's absolutely fucked.

But, when Robin and Marshall and Lily come to visit him at the hospital, it doesn't feel apocalyptic. It doesn't even feel…bad. It feels like—almost like when his mom let him lick the spoon clean of cookie dough, like a slow warmth that spreads like warm cider in the fall—and _Christ_ , he's started waxing sentimental.

Lily and Marshall start talking about boobs in suits lactating scotch and he can't help but be fixated on how gorgeous she is when she smiles. It's a little too clean for him. It makes him feel a little uncomfortable, the thought of attaching himself so readily to one person. But there's something about it that feels normal.

God, he's in way over his head.


	65. do i know you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from here on, everything was posted after each episode without knowledge of future canon, so some of it may get jossed.

He turns on the TV to see her face, bright, glowing (he swallows his doubt with his scotch). She is larger than life on his wall; he clenches his jaw, forces himself to turn it off. There's something so elegiac about it all (he doesn't like to think about the implications.

He still can't believe he told Lily - it was a moment of weakness, he tells himself. And lying with April between the sheets, the harsh light streaming through the windows hitting her at odd angles-- he had closed his eyes and tried to forget. Buried himself in skin. (she pads out like a cat in the night.)

But later at the bar, when Marshall and Lily leave to have sex, and Ted tells them about Stella (who's at his place, waiting), it strikes him just how alone he is. How alone they are. He bites his lip, drains his scotch. "Robin."

She presses her lips together playfully, gauging his expression, but he can feel her awkwardness. "How'd it go with April?" He grins. She laughs. "Nice."

"What up," he says, falsetto. He lifts his hand. The contact makes his skin tingle (she'd never believe him if he told her anyway). A slow burn eases through him - he was never meant to be a Tennyson poem. They never learned that in high school, could never afford it. And now, he has the world in his palm, his emotions in his throat - he just wants to be who he remembered he was.

The girls pass through, blondes and brunettes and redheads. They're simple, easy to understand, easy to please - his lips slide down a neck, kiss a shoulder, bite a lip. He's always clean shaven, always - the only person he wants to mark...

(he doesn't like to finish his thoughts anymore.)

He tries to fix what he cracked, texting her about his conquests. She responds sometimes, usually one word things like "lol" or "ew."

He treats her to the cigar club and they shift into neutral, blowing smoke rings at each other, ignoring the subtext. "It's nice to have you back."

He chuckles. "Did I go somewhere?"

"Maybe the waitress slipped a roofie in your wine."

"Scherbatsky, please. Like this--(he waves his hand over himself)--can be so easily defeated." She arches an eyebrow, laughs.

He swallows the words he wants to say in smoke.

 


	66. best burger in ny

He finds himself sitting next to her a lot that night, squished beside her in booths and cabs. It's enough to set his heart racing. And when they cycle through Manhattan searching for Marshall's perfect burger, he can't help himself from admiring the way she bites her lip when she's frustrated.

And hunger makes her frustrated. So he sneaks her fries here and there.

And when they sit eating burgers, he steals fries off her plate. When she scowls at him, he grins and steals another fry. "Consider it payback." (He wishes Lily would stop looking at him like that.)


	67. i heart nj

There's silence at the table for a good while. "Guys?" And then the outpouring. Lily and Marshall and Ted buying complimentary drinks and bursting with congratulations and "I knew you'd get it!" She looks at him. "Barney?"

A beat. And then -- his smile, tight around his mouth, "Congratulations!"

She smiles back. "Thanks." A million things run through his head at light speed - the times he encouraged her, the bad puns on Metro News 1, the little smiles, the kisses, the night together. The taste of her skin lingers on his tongue for a second with the beer - a phantom taste, a phantom, like she will be in a couple months.

He doesn't know how he's going to deal with this. Lily kicks him under the table. He looks down at his drink and then up at her again, radiating with happiness. He's--he'll never be able to tell her. She's too good for him, she's beyond who he was destined to become. God, it sounds like shit.

Japan. Japan is far. But he knows, he knows the language, the culture. (He knows her.) He's been a few times, and even in the wake of the mess on Wall Street, he's comfortable flying back and forth. But Japan doesn't come with a safety net. It doesn't come with excuses. It comes with, "Robin, I just came to see you" and "Robin,  _daisuki da yo_ ," and and and -- it all trickles down his throat with the bitter taste of fear.  _Kuso_. If it's now or never - he's not ready. He's never ready. (And here's eight-year-old Barney Stinson again, still unable to say that he  _likes_ likes Ashley Riess.)

"Say something, Barney," Lily says, through gritted teeth. She's waiting for it, for the other shoe.

He opens and closes his mouth a few times. Then he grins. "Sake bombs!" He heads for the bar. (Lily's face falls.)

Later, he walks Robin ("Guys, I'm just a  _little_ drunk!") back to her place. "You'll come visit me, right?" she slurs with a hopeful look in her eyes.

"Japanese girls are the new Cubans. I try to keep up with the times," he says with a shrug. She smiles. After she's inside, he closes the door behind him and stands on her stoop for a second. He exhales.

" _Anata wo dakishime nemuritai_." He sticks his hands in his pockets. It starts to rain.


	68. intervention

She's rifling through her things, pulling books off shelves and cleaning and organizing when it happens. A book on the far end tumbles off, clatters as it hits the ground. She grunts in annoyance, bends down to pick it up.

As she opens it, it hits her. The slight floral fragrance that lingers between the pages. Flipping through, she finds it, the corsage he got her for the prom she crashed, pressed between the pages. Memories float through and lodge, bits and chunks of things she's pushed down to make way for the excitement and noise of Tokyo.

The tears come abruptly, unexpectedly. She doesn't want to move. She doesn't want to leave her four best friends to go somewhere strange, where she'd be lost in a sea of faces unlike her own, in a language alien to her, with no friends and no contacts, and no familiarity with the land. She stumbles towards the sofa, accidentally knocking the stack of Japanese phrase books she just bought askew; they slide along the floor. She feels claustrophobic.

She calls him in tears. "I don't," she chokes out, "I don't know if I can do this." She doesn't even know if she's intelligible.

"Robin, Robin, calm down," he murmurs in soft tones.

"I can't move to Japan. What was I thinking?"

"Yes," he says. "Yes, you can. You're Robin Scherbatsky. You moved here from Canada, you did things in your life that tons of people never get the chance to experience. You can move to Japan."

She sniffles. "What am I going to do without you?" Her voice is pained, but she's aware of her faux pas even then. "--you--you guys, I mean."

He lets it pass. "You're going to be legen--wait for it--dary." She huffs out a laugh. "Come on. I'll treat you to coffee."

She meets him at this diner near her apartment. They nestle in a corner booth and he slides his arm around her shoulders and she buries her face in the crook of his shoulder, murmuring "I'm fine" as the rest of her tears trickle down to dampen his suit.

"Thanks for doing this."

"There's nothing to thank me for."

She twines her fingers around his. "I--I really am going to miss you--you guys." He smiles.

By the time the waitress comes around, she's moved away from him, though their fingertips are just barely touching. They order.


	69. shelter island

She's so confused.

Her life is falling apart bit by bit in her hands like a piece of cake - sweetness and certainty slipping through and leaving grains on her skin - lingering memories of what she used to have. She doesn't know when she makes the conscious decision to go to Ted's wedding, doesn't know why she wants to go - she knows it'll be awkward, knows it'll be weird, but she misses them all. Marshall and Lily and Barney and Ted and the bar and Brooklyn - she stares out the window the entire flight.

She tries to get it back - her life? sanity? she's not even sure she knows anymore - tries to cling to something that was so anchoring and permanent in its entirety that it scared the fuck out of her. Except now he doesn't want it - he's not who he was a year ago (and she isn't either). She just wants to not feel so empty. And when she sees Lily, there are hugs and greetings and, "Hey, do you know where Barney is? I want to say hi," but Lily smiles in a way that bothers her a little more than it should.

She buys a bottle of scotch and shows up at his door - she wades into the trenches of temptation far too often. And when he opens the door, shirt unbuttoned and open, she exhales sharply. Maybe she did miss him. Except there's a girl, naked, of course, and he's stammering and - (this has all happened before)

"See you, Barney."

And it doesn't hurt her (not really) because...because she's become a master at lying to herself. The two men in her life she always thought she could - well...

She drinks the scotch by herself.

 


	70. happily ever after

He drags her fingertips along her forearm when they're under the table. She looks at him beneath her lashes and he doesn't flinch, doesn't grin, just plays at normal. Her elbow knocks against his, hair brushing along the plane of his shoulder.

She's playing with fire right now, and she knows it, but that doesn't stop the curiosity, the need, from taking over.

On the cab ride to Tony's apartment, his knee bumps hers and she keeps her gaze trained straight in front of her. She opens and closes her hands almost methodically. He chuckles, low in his throat.

She responds by dropping her hand to where his thigh meets hers, drags her nails against his leg. He swallows. She smiles.

This is a dangerous game to be playing and he knows it. But this is Robin, and his track record with self-restraint is hardly impressive.

Afterward, they decide to go to an Italian restaurant in the West Village. They arrange themselves accordingly at the table, and it just happens that he sits across from her. She smiles at him as they all order. Leaning back, she lets her foot slide casually up his ankle. He arches a brow, sips at his scotch.

"Robin, your dad," Lily starts with a half-apologetic smile. She strikes an optimistic look. "Maybe since tonight's a night of telling people what you think, you should call him and talk to him!"

"Ah, no," she murmurs. "No, not happening. Nope."

"Oh, come on, Robin! He's your dad! He's your Bob Barker, your Obi-Wan - he made you into the person you are today. The person we're all friends with. The person I--hang out with." Lily smiles at him. "Look, he fucked you up, but everyone's parents do that. You wouldn't be Robin Scherbatsky if he didn't do that."

"Thank you, Barney."

"Yeah, Barney," Lily chirps. "That was really sweet."

"Ugh, sweet? Do you know how long it'll take to wash off the Mushy Girl smell? And that cheerleading squad looked so friendly too."

"Oh, gross! Barney!" Lily replies. "They're like in high school!"

"Oh, please. They're totally undergrads."

"You're disgusting," Lily concedes with a shrug.

He stands, heads for the bathroom ("I'm so awesome I have to wash my hands before I eat just so I don't explode from all my awesome."

"Ugh, Barney..."). When Lily leaves to go pee, Robin stands, quickly runs towards the restroom.

When he emerges, she grabs his lapels, pulls him into her space. "Is there anyone else in the bathroom?" she whispers.

He blinks. "What?"

"Is there anyone else in the--"

"No." She kisses him, pushing him into the bathroom stall as her lips curve around his, locks the stall door behind them as his tongue slides expertly across her teeth. He pulls away to briefly murmur her name in confusion before she grabs him, pushes him up against the door.

"You--" She keeps kissing him, breathless. His fingers twine in her hair, growing hard as she rocks her hips against him.

"Scherbatsky, what--"

"Stop--stop talking. I--I don't know what I'm doing." He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "Barney...I--I'm sorry, I..."

He touches her wrist. "You should go first." She turns to unlock the stall door, to leave. Halfway towards the door, she sprints back to him, kisses him again. When she pulls away, she bites her lower lip, savors it. The door swishes closed behind her.

He groans, runs his hands through his hair. He looks down, groans in frustration. Stares at the ceiling, whistles.

This woman is going to be the death of him.


	71. not a father's day

"I have your sock," he says, more than a little drunk.

"What?"

"Your baby sock."

"Oh. That's Lily's."

"Mm."

"Why do you have it?"

"You left it at McClaren's."

"Yeah?"

Silence. Then, "I wouldn't stalk you for a baby sock, Scherbatsky."

"Now how do I know that?"

"Ted says you're moving in."

"Yeah," she says. He's a little too quiet considering the circumstances. Considering. He's a little too quiet. "He has a spare room."

"Yeah. He says you want kids now."

She groans in frustration. "Ted likes to jump the ball."

"Ted and Stella just broke up. He's--"

"I wasn't thinking of--" The mental groan is almost instinct by now. Of course Barney would think that she and Ted would get back together just because they lived together. God, they were just friends. But then... Maybe...no, Barney didn't get jealous. But the word rang in her head, made her blood rush. She couldn't figure out why.

"You don't think about these things. They just sort of..."

"Happen?"

"That's a good word for it."

He chuckles, deep and low. It makes her think of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot - it's an odd comparison. "I really embarrassed myself tonight."

"What, did you hit on an ugly chick? It's probably because your main wingwoman wasn't there to help you tonight."

"I sang Cats in the Cradle."

She groans. "Ohh, tacky."

"Says the woman who stole a baby's sock."

"I don't know what came over me," she replies, defensively. "I blacked out and when I came to, there I was, standing in my apartment, holding the sock."

"That is the worst thing I have ever heard." She huffs out a laugh. "Don't do that 'I don't believe you' look at me, Robin Scherbatsky."

"Barney, we're talking on the phone. How do you...?"

"It is the worst thing I have ever heard."

"Even beyond the script of Who's Nailin' Paylin? Ugh. I still can't believe you pre-ordered that."

"A man's got obligations, Robin. And I have one to the good people of Hustler. They've served me well over the years, taught me many a thing."

"I don't even want to know."

He hums and it takes her a while to realize he's singing. "And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man on the moon." He hums the rest.

She exhales. "Our dads really fucked us up, huh?"

"Listen, I don't know about you, but Bob Barker was..."

"A game show host."

"He was a great dad, Robin. He was...he was something."

She presses her lips together, hears the clinking of glass over the receiver. "Barney, are you still--are you still drinking?"

"What? No," he says. "Why would you say that?" She hears the sound of a bottle being set down.

"You liar."

"Like you aren't drinking your second bottle of wine right now."

"Barney," she says, a tone of warning. "How do you--where are you?" The doorbell rings. She opens the door and laughs. "You're crazy."

He grins. "Hang on a second, I have to talk to this girl. Let me call you back."

"Sure." He inches further into her space. They hang up at the same time.

"You got wine to share?"

"Where's your scotch?" Their breaths mingle.

And then she's leaning in, her lips tantalizingly close. "I don't know, I may have forgotten it." He arches a brow and smirks. "Unless you'd like to frisk me for it."

"Oh, you wish." She pulls him in by his shirt and he almost falls on her. He braces himself against the doorjamb, lets his lips brush hers briefly. She groans. "Ugh, it sucks not having an apartment."

"We could go to mine."

"I don't want to leave. And that would be suspicious. Marshall and Lily--"

"Marshall's working late on a merger," he says. "Where's Lily?"

She smiles. "She went after Marshall."

"So are we..."

"All alone in here?" Her fingers curl around the silk of his tie. "I think so." She kisses him then, mouth sliding expertly against his. His fingers twine in her hair, her hands find the nape of his neck. She groans into the kiss and when he pulls away, she pouts, eyes dark.

"Robin?"

She smiles lazily. "If I move in with Ted, I'll have my own bedroom. I won't have to sleep on the couch."

He chokes back the thought (don't move in with him, it'll all end up repeating itself), musters a soft noise of understanding. "But see," he says as she inches closer, lips nuzzling the skin of his neck, "the last time we did this, we broke one of Ted's ship-in-a-bottle things."

"I don't think Marshall has any of those." She kisses him. "Besides, if you won't tell, neither will I."

He grins, loosens his tie. "Deal."


	72. woooo!

"Come on," she says, extending a hand. "I'll take you home." He just looks up at her helplessly from the floor.

"Robin," he says, almost stuttering with excitement. "Robin, you're in with them. The Woo girls. Get me in."

She clicks her tongue against her teeth. "Can't. Sorry. They really like Ted."

"Oh,  _come on_. Haven't we already established that Ted can't ride a tricycle?"

Robin crinkles her nose in disgust. "Ugh, Barney. Not what I wanted to think about right now."

"That could be my tricycle."

She arches a brow. "Didn't we already establish that you can't ride a tricycle?" He glowers at her. She just smiles, helps him up to his feet.

He licks his lips. "Just you wait, Scherbatsky. You'll get what's coming to you."

"Uh huh." She points at her head. "How's your, uh, ear thing?"

"Pssh, I'm fine." He takes a step to prove it and ends up collapsing on the floor again. She laughs.

"You're so not." She holds him up and leads him outside, hails a cab. She heaves him into it, gives the cab driver his address.

"Robin," he says.

"Huh?"

His eyes fall to her lips briefly. "Thanks."

She smiles. "Woo."


	73. the naked man

She brushes her fingers along the tie rack. "Can't you just pick one and leave? You know, like normal people?"

He clicks his tongue. "Scherbatsky, a tie is not just a tie. (She sighs, "Of course it's not.") It is an article of clothing that relates my awesomeness to the world. Plus, it can spice things up if the sex is bad. It's a win-win." He ticks the wins off his fingers.

She crinkles her nose. "Nice."

He laughs. "I thought so."

She holds another up. "This one?"

"Robin, I brought you because you're supposed to have  _taste_."

"So that's a no."

He lifts one up. "This one?" She shakes her head.

They walk through the store quietly, shooing away salespeople as they approach. She finally picks up a bright blue one, holds it up against his chest. "Take off your tie."

"Scherbatsky!" He feigns offense. "Shouldn't we get into a dressing room first?"

"Hurry up! It's not like I don't have things to do."

He undoes his tie. "You're so touchy." She loops the new one around his neck, ties it for him. "Windsor knot? Nice."

"Let's take it and get out of here."

He chuckles. She swallows hard.


	74. the fight

She goes to the game alone, the extra ticket lying in her purse like a dead weight. She sees a flash of silk on her way back from the bathroom, but shakes her head. He's not here. He wouldn't be here. She loses herself in the violence.

He texts her afterwards and she agrees to meet him at McClaren's. She sips at her scotch. "You lied."

"But it was a lie to perpetuate awesomeness." She sighs as he shrugs off his jacket, undoes the cuffs, pushes the sleeves up. "You want me to fight someone?"

"No," she says, quietly. "I don't." She breathes shakily, sees buses and hospital beds.

"Scherbatsky, you disinvited me from hockey." His finger twitches, inching near hers.

"I--" She struggles for an explanation. He snaps his fingers, excitedly.

"I know how we'll settle this."

"What?"

"Let's go."

"Where are we going?"

"My apartment." She crinkles her nose.

"Let's go to mine."

"You mean, Ted's?"

"Yeah, yeah, your best friend Ted's." She nudges him out of the booth.

When they get to Ted's apartment, she throws up her arms, tosses her purse on the sofa. "Okay, we're here. What do you want to do?"

He holds up his fists. "Let's go."

She laughs. "Are you serious?"

He pulls a straight face. "Does this face lie?"

"I'm going to beat you - it's hardly fair."

"Oh, please. Take the actual gun out of the equation and you're just another girl. Canadian, but aside from that, just another girl."

"You want to insult Canada one more time?" She throws a jab against his arm. "Try me. Go ahead. I'll show you what fighting's all about."

"Oh," he says, pulling a face as he bounces on his toes. "You'll show me what fighting's aboot?"

She throws a punch but he ducks, reaches to pin her onto the ground. She slams her fist into his ribcage. He groans. "Oh, Scherbatsky, that was dirty!" he wheezes.

"No, that's fighting," she says with a laugh. He hits her in the side and she exhales sharply. He tries his evil laugh.

She elbows him, rolls them over, pins him down with her upper body. He squirms and she slides back against him. She gasps. "Barney!"

"What?" he tries. "All the sliding...you know." She rolls her eyes. "Girls find it hot."

"You're gross."

"Uh-huh." Her lips slide down to meet his all the same.


	75. little minnesota

He nudges it toward her uneasily. She smiles. "What is it?"

He snorts. "What do you think it is, Scherbatsky? Some big, old white dude told me to give it to you."

She huffs out a laugh. "I thought the five of us were just going to do Secret Santa this year."

"I just thought of you when I saw it." He squirms.

She lifts the top off the box precariously, reaching in to remove another box. She arches a brow. "Is this going to be one of those things that ends in me beating you?"

He chuckles. "I hope not."

She lifts the top off the second box and reaches in to grab something profoundly bottle-shaped. "Is it scotch?" She shakes it, crinkles her nose when she doesn't hear anything. "No. And not wine." She tears off the wrapping paper excitedly, like a child. She sniffles at the sight, lifting it up reverently. "Barney..."

He tosses his head. "Don't get all...girly on me, Scherbatsky."

"You bought me maple syrup from Vancouver?"

"Thank you, Barney. Seriously." She twists off the cap, sticks her nose against the rim, and inhales. He smirks. "Shut up. I'm enjoying the moment."

"I'll say."


	76. benefits

He honestly does try to tell her.

When they're alone at McClaren's, when they're grabbing food - he tries, but the words stick in his throat and make him stutter. Or when they do come out, clear and loud, she laughs it off, calling him Ted and tossing her hair.

She has to know, he thinks. Somewhere deep down, she has to realize that all these weird tics of his are real. Maybe she doesn't want to accept it. Him. He's not exactly -- (shannon used to tell him he was pathetic when they fought, and now and now)

He's cursed. That has to be it. A weird twist on some Greek myth, he's trapped looking in two lakes at the same time, seeing himself splintered and being unable to do anything. One side talks or the other. Never both. (he will never be whole)

So when he shows up at Ted's place with a bag of Tim Horton's (and that look on her face, that look), they sit and eat. And she says, "Barney, did you--"

"What?"

"You love me?" And she turns her eyes up at him.

He rolls his eyes, clicks his tongue. "Please."

(cursed, cursed, cursed)


	77. three days of snow

His voice is raspy over the phone. "What exactly did you do?"

"Are you getting sick?"

"Scherbatsky, it is cold outside. We can't all be from Canada." He can sense her eye roll.

"You need to help me dig my car up. I can't leave it on 42nd 'til the spring thaw!"

He laughs. "Oh ho ho. Robin!" He drops his voice an octave. "What's the magic word?" She can sense his eyebrow arch.

She sighs. "Listen, I didn't want to have to bring this up, but I still have those pictures of you at Thanksgiving..."

"I'll be right over."

She smirks. "Yeah, I thought so." He calls her back thirty seconds later. "What do you want?"

"Snowsuit up!" The phone clicks as she laughs.

It's bitterly cold out and the wind rips right through them as they stand outside, chipping away at the wall of the snow that encompasses her car. The NYPD on the opposite side of the street are laughing at them. "Robin, this is evil."

She huffs. "Barney," she groans as she gingerly claws at the snow with her mittened hands.

"I mean, you're holding Thanksgiving over my head so that I can defrost your accidental igloo." She shoots him a glare. When she turns back to face the wall of snow facing her, she feels something cold hit the back of her head. She turns to him.

"Are you--you just did not do that."

"Scherbatsky, I will buy you a new car if we can go inside before we get frostbite."

"I like my car! And don't think I forgot about what you did."

He stoops, makes another snowball. Chucks it right in her face. The soft snow breaks up, crumble down past her scarf to hit her chest. She shivers.

He feigns an accent. "That's how we do it in New York!"

She tackles him to the street, grabs a fistful of snow and rubs it in his face. "That's how we do it in Canada."

"That was dirty."

"Look, just because you lost--"

"Wha-- I didn't lose."

She smirks. "Keep telling yourself that."

The cop from across the street suddenly clears his throat. "Can't do that in the street."

Barney holds up his index finger, reaches for his cell phone, dials a number. "Hey, Mike? Yeah, so Doug here is trying to - what? No! On Black Friday? Victoria's Secret? Really? The Secretary of the Treasury? Oh, I need you to pull a few strings, I need a car to get defrosted."

The cop turns to him, shocked. "Who are you?"

He clicks his tongue. "Oh, please."

"So what'd you do about my car?"

"The city'll help out. You totally owe me a latte."

She arches a brow. "You're such a girl."

"I'm sorry. Did my name change to Ted in the past ten seconds?" She snorts.

"Come on, Barney. There's this great coffee place down a block."

He starts down the street. She flings a snowball at his head.

(He sighs. "Canadians.")


	78. the possimpible

The computer screen makes his eyes burn. He's been sitting with a bottle of Visine by his side all night, and he hasn't even been working on his blog. It's been worth it though – he's been compiling Robin's video resume and he could think of worse ways to spend his night than staring at the same five clips he has of her as he edits and re-edits everything. He feels something deep in him ache when she comes on screen again, radiating a smile. His heart pounds, hands twitch. He hits the spacebar, waiting for the video to cue up.


	79. the stinsons

His mom makes him bring them by her house ("Aw, Barney, I want to meet people who are in your life!") Except one night, Spaghetti Night, Ted and Marshall and Lily all call and tell him they're running late. So it's the woman he loves and his mom and him in the same building for an hour or four. Great.

After dinner, when his mom has decided that a fifth story about her dancing days at The Bullhouse might be inappropriate, she breaks out the Scrabble board. Robin grins. "I love Scrabble!"

"Oh, honey, I know I'm pushin' 60 and from Staten Island, but I'm gonna kick your ass."

Half an hour later, it's still a pretty tight game. His letter rack (heh, rack) has a Q, an X, and a Z, but he's not worried. There have to be words without vowels somewhere. Maybe Ancient Mayan counts. Robin plops down her letters. "Scherbatsky, when you cross the Canadian border and you start seeing actual cops instead of dudes in red jackets on horses, we drop the 'u' in color."

"Shut up, Barney." Her Canadian accent emerges in all its glory. "Why do you think you're so special, huh? Don't have a Tim Horton's on every corner but it still rains in Vancouver." She chuckles. "Plus, you're the only ones who don't use the Metric system. You're like uncool people who don't follow the…Metric system."

He clicks his tongue. "Yeah, was that a sentence?"

"I can see your letters."

"Pssh."

"PS: There's no word that has a Q, an X, and a Z, so stop trying."

"What about…Ancient Mayan?"

"You don't speak Ancient Mayan."

"What do you know? Mexico is the other end of the continent, Anne of Green Gables."

"Okay, Cavendish was the best stop on my second trans-Canadian tour."

"It's like…we're not even speaking the same language."

"Besides, Scrabble rules say only English counts."

"What? No!"

"Yes."

"I bet you a box of Cubans and Johnnie Walker Black that I'm right!"

"You're not allowed to bet anymore, remember?"

He slaps his forehead. "Ugh, you're killing me here!" He snaps his fingers. "Call Ted. Call Ted!"

"I'm not calling Ted."

"Barney?" his mom asks.

"Yeah, mom?"

"Whose turn is it?"

Robin crinkles her nose. "Uh, it's mine. No, wait, it's yours, it's yours."

Barney's mom sets the tiles down slowly, building off the tail end of another word. "Perfect."


	80. sorry, bro

They sit in Ted's apartment when he's out with Karen, beer and ribs on the table. Her ankles are crossed, feet bare. "And so then, he forgot his pants," Barney cackles, writhing on the sofa.

She smirks. "I've heard the story, Barney. You told it."

"Why aren't you laughing?"

"I'm laughing on the inside."

"Are you really?"

"No."

He gasps. "I brought you ribs."

"You got them from the wrong place."

"Do you know how many ribs places there are in Brooklyn?" Pause. "I had to go to Brooklyn!"

She reaches around him for the plastic bag on the floor. "What movie did you get?" She pulls out the clunky VHS tape. "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris? I love this movie!"

"What?" he intones, sarcastically. "You do? What a surprise!"

"How'd you know?"

He finishes a rib, sucks the sauce off his fingers. "I read your FBI file."

"I have an FBI file? You could get to my FBI file?"

"You did try to illegally immigrate a while ago."

"I did not!"

"Well, the United States government seems to think you did."

"What am I going to do, run an illegal smuggling ring of Grade A Amber?"

"That sounds pretty shady to me, Scherbatsky."

"It's maple syrup, Barney."

"Sure it is. And then the next thing you know, we're all speaking French-Canadian and listening to Celine Dion. Non, merci."

She sighs, gestures with her bare foot. "Pop in the tape."

"I can't believe you've actually heard of this movie."

They watch the movie until two a.m., and halfway towards drunk, Barney joins in with the cast rendition of "Quand on n'a que l'amour". She leans back against the couch, face warm, and tries not to think how much she wants to kiss him. He smiles.


	81. front porch

He drops her off at work the next day, sits in the studio and watches them film. She's bright when she's on camera, a shade darker thanks to the stage make-up, her journalist voice switched on.

On her break, she comes and sits with him as the various producers shuffle back and forth. He gets sandwiches from the craft services table and they eat and chat.

"Robin," he says. "You're great at what you do."

She stops, chews her mouthful of arugula, smiles back at him. "You want my brownie?"

He grins. "That's what she said." She shakes her head.

 


	82. old king clancy

He taps his fingers on the table. "How do you do an Old King Clancy?"

She smirks, drinks her beer. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I've tried the Sacramento turtleneck, Scherbatsky. And the Cavendish Snow Queen, the Leninisk Blini, the Vinh Chau gỏi cuốn, the Osoyoos Mountie. I've gone international, and the Old King Clancy is impossible."

"Not if you do it like the Oakland Raider with a Keystone Rushmore twist."

He gasps. "No." Breaking out a notebook, he jots it down. "That's smart, Scherbatksy. I like the way you think."

"I still can't believe Shoe turned me down."

"Wait,  _Shoe_?"

"That's what he told me to call him. "

He gasps in revelation. "Wait, he turned you down?"

Her eyes widen, open palms slamming the table. "Damn it! Tell anyone and I'll tell them that you couldn't do the Old King without my help."

"You wouldn't.

"I would."

He reaches behind her ear. "Well, there's a quarter," he tries, lamely. She laughs. Her fingers brush his when she takes the quarter from him.

"I'll treat you to a game of laser tag," she says, heading out the door.

"Robin, this isn't 1952! Laser tag costs more than a quarter!"


	83. murtaugh

She lets him lean against her at the rave. "I don't think that was aspirin," he slurs. She coughs out a laugh. "This shirt makes me itch."

"You look like a girl."

"Is it the pink hair? Because pink is my color." His breath comes out hot against her neck as he talks, his legs bent awkwardly. It sends a tingle up her spine.

"Yeah," she says, texting idly on her Blackberry.

"Robin Scherbatsky, are you e-mailing work? Because cool, young people like us do not do things like e-mail work!"

"Whoo!" she tries. "Rave!"

He rolls his eyes. "Lame."

 


	84. mosbius designs

She munches on one of the pretzels on the table. "He thinks I'm the greatest woman on the planet?"

Ted smiles. "I guess so."

"That's weird, right? That's weird. I mean, it's Barney. Barney wouldn't say things like that."

"He just did, Robin."

"Which is why it's weird, Ted. Try and keep up."

She sweeps the crumbs away from her, looks up at him by the bar. Shoulders tense, downing another shot. "Don't sleep with PJ, Robin. He's my assistant."

"You don't need an assistant, Ted."

At the bar, Barney downs another shot, looks back at her. Her skin tingles.


	85. the three days rule

Barney swigs his beer, casts a look at Marshall. "No one appreciates magic anymore." He tosses a spark from one hand to the other. Marshall tries to look impressed.

"Remember the last time you did that? You almost lit the bar on fire."

Barney smirks. "Heh, fire."

"Not cool, dude." He snickers. "That was pretty awesome though."

"And the way Carl broke out that fire extinguisher…" Barney fiddles with the neck of his beer bottle. "You think she likes him?"

"What?" His face lights up. "You mean Wendy and Carl? I always suspected –"

"No, no, no! Not Wendy. She's," he gestures, "You know. Not…stable." He clears his throat, coughs. "You know, Stan."

"Stan?"

"Stan, the-one-who-helped-us-text-as-Holly, Stan?"

"I know who he is. What about him?"

"Do you…" He sighs. "I mean, you don't think—she doesn't like him, right? She's not—she wouldn't."

Marshall smiles. "Dude, I don't think she likes him like that. He's just poetic." Marshall leans on his hands.

"You think so?"

"You remember that thing he said about the bread."

"Yeah, I do."

Marshall sets his hand on Barney's. "You okay now, dude?"

Barney eyes him warily. " _You're_  not having gay dreams about me, are you?"


	86. right place, right time

She sits in the booth. His suit – crinkled unevenly, sharp creases. "You lied."

"What?"

"Pippi Longstocking was on your list. Lara Croft was on your list.  _I_  was not on your list."

He blinks, looking down into his scotch, jerks his head toward her beer bottle. "Should you be drinking that?"

"What?"

"You're pregnant." A drop of condensation rolls down the side silently.

She purses her lips. "Oh."

He tries for the quick laugh. "Yeah, there's only like a warning and everything on the bottle."

"I'm not."

"I figured."

"Food poisoning."

"I heard Schlegel's closed."

"Food poisoning." She sighs. "Barney."

"Why would you lie to me about something like that?"

She doesn't have an answer and he knows it. "Why'd you make the list if it wasn't real?"

"I asked first."

"I asked second."

"I don't know," he says.

"Lie to me," she says.

He drains his scotch. "I mean, you do it to me all the time." He walks away and she just lifts his tumbler, slides her tongue along the glass as she tips it back to collect that last drop. The drop on the back of her tongue, the faint slow burn – it's almost like a memory.


	87. as fast as she can

"Try it on me," she says.

He arches an eyebrow. "Robin Scherbatsky, you are not prepared for my level of verbal…" He shakes his scotch tumbler indiscriminately, waving his arm. "…whatever."

"Well," she chirps. "At least we're not operating in the vague anymore."

Lily leans back against the sofa. "Robin," she says, "I don't think you're ready for Barney's level of sleaze."

"Thank you, Lily!" Barney adds.

Robin just narrows her eyes, hissing, "Bring. It. On." She leans back comfortably in her chair. "I mean, you couldn't get out of, what, twelve speeding tickets? It couldn't have been that good. Or…you know, good at all."

"You aren't ready."

"Trust me. I'm from Canada. Our motto is, 'Be prepared.'"

"Like the Boy Scouts?" She rolls her eyes. "No, your motto is 'From Sea to Sea.' Psh, try and keep up. I'm not even from Canada. What does that even mean anyway? Sea to sea? At least ours is, you know, whatever – we still wage wars and stuff." He snorts. " _Canada_."

"You know, Barney, you're talking the talk, but – "

"Fine." He loosens his necktie, mussing up his hair a little. He casts his gaze downward before turning his gaze on her, eyes all puppy-dog-like. "Please, officer, I was just on my way to visit my grandmother at the hospital. She just had a stroke and—" He pauses to sniffle, his eyes shining with tears. He squeaks out, "I can't lose her, officer – she's all I have left.  _Please_."

Lily moves to sit next to him while Robin gawps. "Oh my  _god_."

Barney doesn't say anything.

"You almost look—" Robin stammers for a few minutes, trying to find the right words.

Lily rubs his shoulder comfortingly. "Can I get you a cookie?" she coos. She heads for the kitchen before she brings back a wrapped cookie. "This one's oatmeal, honey. It's all I have. I wish I had chocolate chip, but I didn't get around to baking. You all right?"

He coughs before raising his arms in a sign of triumph. " _I_ …am the master!"

Lily blinks, disoriented. "You bastard." She stammers. "You tricked me – you – I went into kindergarten teacher mode! I- I can't explain it." She punches his arm.

Robin narrows her eyes before grinning. "That deserves the highest of fives." She raises her hand.

"Maybe a cigar?"

"Yeah, I wouldn't push it."

Lily hums. "I don't know, Robin. There were fake tears going on. That and the puppy dog eyes? From a man who's dirtier than…than…that bum on 12th St.?" At Barney's recoil, she adds, "Oh, just morally. I know you shower." He shrugs.

"Lily…" Robin says.

"I'm just saying, Robin. A cigar club da – um, I mean, a friend…thing with friends and scotch and booze."

Robin smiles. "Date, Lily. You can say it."

Lily turns her hopeful eyes on Barney. "Yeah?"

"A  _bro_ date," Barney appends as Robin high-fives him again. He swallows hard and his chest feels tight. He shouldn't want this so much. Robin laughs.


	88. the leap

"They sit on her bed, space deliberately between them. "So," he says. "We were going to talk about this."

"Yep," she says, clapping her hands together. "Sort this out." And then she turns to look at him and it all kind of…devolves.

He makes a noise low in his throat and says, "I really want to kiss you right now." (Which, are you kidding? She's had enough trouble dealing with all this emotional-or-sex crap and Barney's never wanted for anything in the hotness department.)

She clambers onto his lap then, nose awkwardly bumping against his as she kisses him, hands moving into his hair. He groans into her mouth before pulling away. "This is – we should talk. We should talk? What am I saying? I don't know what I'm saying."

"You want to have this conversation for both of us, Barney? Because I'm okay with that."

He looks at her, swallows hard. "We should do it."

"What?"

"I mean, we took the literal leap, so why don't we take the – you know what I'm saying." She purses her lips, gives a half-shrug. "Let's say we're the goat."

"We should do it," she says.

His lips twitch with the hint of a smile. "You think so?"

"Yeah," she says, grinning. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"Well, we could break each other's hearts and never be able to be bros again," he says, his face falling. "We could screw this up or we could – it could be, you know."

"What? Legendary?" She sits up, reaches for his tie and tugs him back down on top of her. Her lips inch closer to his and he can't think; this is Robin and she is all not Mosbying him and she smells so, so, so nice.

"What the hell," he says, moving to close the distance between them. He stops himself suddenly, holding himself away for a brief moment. "We're not going to become Ted, are we?"

She grimaces. "Oh, god. I hope not. With the kids and the—" She shudders.

"No blue French horns."

"I know."

He smiles as he kisses her and she laughs – this is exhilarating, it's like adrenaline and her heart's beating so fast, she can barely catch her breath.

When she's got his suit jacket off and is working at his buttons, they hear a knock on the door.

"Guys?" Ted's voice floats through. "What are you doing?" Barney snickers into the bare skin of her shoulder, nuzzles her neck. "It's just that I have to do lesson plans tonight and I don't want to think about…that…when I'm thinking about how to present Frank Lloyd Wright's masterful yet avant-garde rendition of the Strughold Arch."

"Ted," Barney calls. "Shut up about architecture. We're not trust-fund baby co-eds at Columbia looking to sound even more pretentious."

"We could get Lily to bring the goat over again, because we know how much you and Lizzy love each other," Robin adds.

"You're awesome," he says.

She just kisses him. He smiles.


	89. definitions

"There's this great place I know," she says. "It's just around the corner. They make the  _best_ pancakes."

He scoffs. "Pancakes aren't really my—"

"They have beer in them."

"Pancakes it is!"

She grins. "I knew you'd like that."

And sitting there, pouring syrup over his apple beer pancakes, he thinks that this feels normal somehow. She kicks his foot under the table; he spills powdered sugar on her hand.

"Lily's so gullible," he says.

She snorts. "Like we'd ever do that gross boyfriend/girlfriend, can't-live-without-you thing.  _Ew_." She does that weird, awkward laugh of hers and he laughs.

"Lily just wants everyone to be like her and Marshall."

Robin laughs, bursting with a sudden idea. "Oh! Oh! Do you think we should come up with ridiculous nicknames for each other, like _Marshmallow_ and  _Lilypad_ do?"

"What would I even call you? Robinson Crusoe?"

She wrinkles her forehead. "That's not a nickname."

"Yeah, you're right. It's way too long."

"I can't think of anything for you."

"I can't think of anything for you either."

As they walk back towards Ted's, he takes her hand. She arches a brow. "You know, to convince them."

"Sure."

She curls her fingers around his.


	90. double date

"I think it's cute you're jealous," he says with a smirk, swishing the scotch in his tumbler.

She rolls her eyes. "I'm not jealous."

"Yeah," he coughs. "Right."

"Barney," she groans. "I'm heading back home."

"Hey," he calls, fingers tapping against her palm. "I can't stop being me, just like you can't stop being you."

She sighs. "I know."

He leans in, lips brushing against her neck. "Things are different now."

She tilts her head towards his, noses bumping, lips crushed against his. She exhales shakily when she pulls away.

"I'm no good at this."

He smiles, exhales. "Me neither."


	91. robin 101

He barges in, holding up a composition notebook. "What is this?"

She grins. "Well, I thought it was only fair."

"You're taking lessons on me from  _Marshall_?"

She keeps her face stoic. "He says you're  _best friends_."

He chuckles low in his throat. "He says I'm afraid of the rhesus monkey."

"I bet you are."

"And Lily wrote in that I can't decorate my apartment?"

Robin crosses her arms. "Also true."

He approaches her slowly. "You're just asking for it."

"Asking for what?"

He runs and pins her against the sofa, lips brushing her neck, her shoulder, before going to kiss her. She laughs into the kiss as he settles down against her, moves his hands into her hair.

It's breathless, she thinks, this relationship with Barney – she's all over the place. One minute, she's like Meg Ryan circa forever, and the next, they're all over each other. It's nice, she thinks. Crazy. Maybe this is what her relationship with Ted should have been like. She feels lost, but in a good way.

His teeth slide against her neck and she chuckles low in her throat. He lifts himself up onto his elbows. "That's not a Lefty kind of deal, right? That's real?"

She chuckles. "What do you think?"

And then, as she's loosening his tie, he brushes the hair out of her eyes. "Tell me something."

She bites her lip. "What?"

"Something I don't know about you. I don't need to learn about you from Ted – you're the better professor."

She shifts them around to slide in his lap. "I secretly love Anne of Green Gables."

He coughs on a laugh. " _What_?"

"She's Canadian and I read it when I was like eight, and I just love it, okay? Shut up."

He kisses her softly. "It's cute."

She arches a brow. "Did you just call me cute?"

He blinks. "What, me, no – the – you know, the window's…open," he finishes, lamely. "Someone probably—"

She laughs, nuzzles her head into the crook of his neck. "Tell me something about you now." She's got her hands on his lapels and she can't help but think of how  _good_ he smells – silk crushed beneath her fingers and his skin just waiting for her. She shifts over him and he groans.

"Okay, um," he snorts with laughter, "When we were little, James and I used to play  _Miami Vice_ instead of like hide-and-seek."

She smiles. "What, really?"

He nods.

She wraps her arms around him as he picks her up. "Now let's go learn about the fun stuff."

-

When Ted comes home that night, Barney's walking out of the bathroom. He covers his eyes. "Barney!"

"Ted, I'm  _toweled_ up."

"I don't want to see anything. Is Robin in—"

"She's sleeping.  _Finally_."

Ted winces. " _Dude_!"

Barney grins. "You'll never guess what happened."

"I don't want to know what—"

"I got her to like the knee thing." Barney gets a glass of water, takes a sip. "You don't want to know how."


	92. the sexless innkeeper

Marshall's running out to the local cheese shop to see if they have any more Gouda ("And Apples to Apples!" Lily says. "I  _can't believe you forgot the_ Apples to Apples!"

"How am I supposed to find an Apples to Apples at a  _cheese shop_ , dear?"

"I don't know but you better figure it out,  _sweetie_.") when Barney nudges Robin with his elbow.

"I feel like we're in Children of the Corn," he says. "We're going to die if we don't leave."

Lily turns to them, a grin on her face. "What are you whispering about,  _outlander_?"

Barney blinks, afraid. "What?"

"I said, what are you whispering about?"

"Oh, nothing. Robin and I just were talking about … going to the corner store to get some … cigarettes."

Robin laughs nervously. "Yeah, you know us, couple of smokers."

"And we wouldn't want to stink up your apartment."

"But thank you for a lovely evening."

"You guys will be back next week?" Lily says.

"Oh, definitely," Robin says.

"Definitely, maybe," Barney says.

"That's a romantic comedy," Lily says.

"You're so good at charades," Barney says.

They run down the two flights of stairs to the corner store. Panting, Robin takes his hand. "Oh, my god. We're not like them, right? I love them, but—"

"No," he says, wheezing. "No, we're not like them.  _Yet_."

"Don't say that!" she hisses. "You'll jinx us."

He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights up. He passes it to her and she takes a drag. "Robin, I don't think I've ever been so scared of Parcheesi in my life."

They link hands, start walking towards the subway station. On the train, she kisses him. "We won't end up like them."

He kisses the top of her head. "Nah."

Someone crinkles a newspaper.


	93. duel citizenship

In the hospital, she holds his hand. "It's sweet what you did for me," she says. "Even if it was really stupid."

"It's  _Canada_ ," he snorts, as the doctor glares at him.

"He doesn't mean anything by it," she says, quickly.

"How was I supposed to know lumberjacks could be so vicious?"

"It's like you've never even  _seen_ a hockey game."

He scoffs. " _Scherbatsky_ , how is that even a question?"

She smiles and leans down, lips brushing his quickly. She smiles against his lips as he tries to deepen the kiss. "It was sweet, even if you do insult my homeland all the time."

Two weeks later, he shows up at her dressing room with a box. Putting in her earrings, she smiles, "What's that?"

He clears his throat. "It's a  _toque_ , eh."

She laughs. "Oh, my god. Are you … you're seriously trying to  _be_ Canadian?"

"There's like one dictionary online, so it might be wrong. Because Canada is, you know, huge and mostly populated with moose."

She smacks his arm playfully before slipping the beanie on her head. Rob, the hair stylist for her show, rolls his eyes. "I'm going to have to redo your hair," he says.

 


	94. bagpipes

She breaks down when she's sweeping up the plate shards from the floor.

And she thinks  _maybe it shouldn't be this hard_. Things weren't this hard with Ted. She always knew where she stood with him – when times were good, they were good and when they weren't, they weren't; it was clearly delineated time blocks.

It's different with Barney. She keeps spinning between loving him and hating him every single second, and it's confusing and most of the time, she just wants to end it.

But when she thinks about it, there's something holding her back. It shouldn't be this hard, she thinks. She sees Marshall and Lily all the time and it comes so easily to them – they work together effortlessly, she never sees them fight, and they're just automatically a unit. Marshall-and-Lily. No questions asked.

But them? They're either having sex or fighting. And it's  _tiring_ , she thinks, as she dumps the shards in the trash.

When he comes home, she's sitting on the sofa, legs drawn up to her chest.

He tentatively sits down next to her, slips an arm around her.

"Barney, we really need to talk about this," she says.

He kisses the top of her head. "I know." She slides down, leans her body against his frame.

They sit in silence.

And she thinks  _it shouldn't be this hard_.

"I love you," he says. And it's Barney – that genuine, soft voice that she doesn't think she's ever heard him use outside of his apartment, his space –

"I love you too," she says. And she thinks maybe that isn't enough to make up for their shortcomings, maybe she doesn't love him as much as she thought she did – love should be easy, she thinks. Easier than this.

"We'll manage," he says.

They sit in silence.


	95. rough patch

He's at this spa in Midtown, getting a deep cleanse and body wrap and weekend of fasting that's bound to get him to drop all this relationship weight (which is not a metaphor). Klaus has him wrapped in giant leaves, resting in the sauna, and as he's laying there, arms bound tightly to his sides, sweating away, he can't help but  _think_.

This is  _lame_. This is the opposite of awesome.

They're piping in some sickly sweet Muzak that makes him want to claw his own face off, which, of course, he can't do.

He doesn't know where it all went wrong. He calls for Klaus; they call Robin and put her on speakerphone.

"I thought we were good," he says.

"Barney, I don't think this is a good time to talk about it."

"If we don't talk about it now…"

And he can hear the gears turning in her head because this is Robin and he's Barney and what do they talk about? Scotch, women, bro-hood. But not relationships. Not monogamy. And certainly not  _their_ brief monogamous relationship.

She sighs. "What do you want to talk about?" And he can hear it, the tension in her voice, the way she exhales at the end of the sentence that makes him think that he doesn't want to do this to her, to himself, but he can't help but wonder why they've ended up here when they started out at such a good place.

"What happened?" he asks.

It's like a car crash, he thinks. It's like a car crash because it's messy but there's that weird death knell of peace around it and driving past it, you can't help but watch and you can't help but wonder  _what happened_. And they are the sum of all their parts and she's Canadian and he's a New Yorker, but  _they worked_. They worked. And he hasn't done this since Shannon so maybe there's some part of his brain that's not comprehending, failing to understand something that Marshall and Lily and Ted all have down pat.

"We just…don't work," she says. She exhales again – sighs.

Maybe they were trying to be people they were never cut out to be. It feels like grade school all over again, he thinks, with the other kids calling him and James trash just because their mom –

He gets Klaus to call James.  _James_ , he wants to say,  _I just had my first relationship in a long while and it fell apart and I want to know what happened and just – tell me what to do_. But he is who he is. And even though he tries to change, he thinks it's always going to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. Maybe he's deluded even himself with this post-Shannon charade of who he wants himself to be.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey, Barney. What's going on?"

He can't think of what to say, can't process. It feels like losing Shannon all over again, like he's losing himself, like he can't figure out how to climb out of the hole; he doesn't even know how deep it goes so how he can ask people to help him out of it?

It's like Nietzche – the abyss is staring back into him with a vengeance.

"I broke up with Robin," he says. And then, with forced cheer, "And now I'm in Midtown, getting a cleanse!"

"Cut the crap, Barney," James says. "How are you really doing?"

He says, "I don't know how to talk about it. I don't know if I should."

He hears a huff of laughter. And then, in James's terrible Yoda voice, "Mind what you have learned. Save you it can."

And he thinks,  _Star Wars. New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi._ He can't think of a better metaphor for his trek down this road.

-

When he's getting ready to go to McClaren's, he finds one of her scarves. He ties the Windsor knot extra tight, looks at himself in the mirror.

He numbers the available women in the room – conquest is conquest, and rebuilding who he was starts with a first step (inside someone's apartment, that is).

He doesn't look at Robin. (He can't.)


	96. the playbook

Marshall and Ted accidentally break the news to him over breakfast as Barney talks about the aftermath of The Scuba Diver. "Lily said that Robin said that she got a totally hot new co-anchor yesterday." Marshall slams his palms down on the table excitedly.

Ted, pinky out, loudly sips at his coffee before he and Marshall high-five. With a nod of enthusiasm, Ted says, "I've narrowed down my appropriate, yet playful wedding anecdotes to three."

Barney stabs a pancake piece and shoves it in his mouth, jaw clenching as he chews slowly. He coughs out a laugh. "Robin met a guy?"

"Dude, you slept with like half of Manhattan last night. You can't expect her to not do anything," Ted says. Marshall's rearranging the food items on his plate to be a smiley face.

"You're talking about  _best man_ speeches." He snorts and downs the rest of his coffee. "I  _sleep around_ , but you're planning Robin's wedding."

"Are you—" Marshall's lip quirk for a second before he points the fork towards Barney, "Are you  _jealous_?"

"What? No! Why would I be? She didn't dump me. We broke up. Mutually. You know, we made the decision together."

"Dude," Ted intones, "You totally are."

Barney rolls his eyes. "Ted, sometimes I think you forget that not everybody wants to be a Ted."

Marshall nods sagely. "That's true, Ted."

"Marshall, you've been married longer than any of us. I think you're the bigger Ted."

"Please, Ted, let the grown-ups talk."

Ted rolls his eyes. "Marshall, you are just as big a romantic. And so are you, Barney. Somewhere underneath that ridiculous exterior."

Barney snorts. "Ridiculous? I think you mean  _awesome_." He takes another bite of his pancakes and then, "I just didn't think that Robin would be into a relationship so soon."

Marshall leans in, conspiratorially. "I spied on them on set—"

"Marshall, don't you have a  _job_?"

"—oh,  _please_ , Ted—and he's  _totally_ into her. They're  _made_ for each other."

Barney blinks. "Could this  _get_ any lamer? Seriously,  _girls_ , Charlotte, Carrie, it was nice having  _brunch_ but as the only man left at this table, I think it's time for me to go."

"Sit down, Barney," Ted says. Barney just arches a brow, stays standing. Silence. "We'll take you out to laser tag." After a minute, he begrudgingly sits back down.

Ted flags the waitress, asks for a side of home fries. "You're  _still_ hungry?" Barney asks.

"Hey, like you should talk. Remember the relationship gut?"

Barney grimaces. "Don't remind me." He stares into his glass of orange juice. "They really should serve scotch at these places."

"It's  _eleven a.m._ ," Ted says.

Barney rolls his eyes.

When Barney goes to pay (and he insists), Marshall and Ted high-five underneath the table.

"Ted," Marshall stage-whispers. "This is going better than I thought!"

"I know! This is so easy," Ted says.

The thing that Barney doesn't know is that he's not the only one with a playbook. They share a glance.


	97. slapsgiving 2: revenge of the slap

He can't look her in the eye.

She doesn't say one word to him all night.

It's like  _Kramer vs. Kramer_ but he has a hard time convincing himself either of them were ever in it for the long haul and, as he downs glass after glass of wine, Lily looks at him out of the corner of her eye, concerned. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he says, with a smile. "I'm going to go outside for a smoke."

She crinkles her nose, nudges him with a soft smile. "That stuff'll kill you, you know." He shrugs, indifferent.

He stands outside, knowing that his flask is there (inside jacket pocket). He holds it in his hand, flicks the cap off before taking a long draught. It's times like these that he wonders if he's at risk for alcoholism. He tops off the flask before lighting up; the alcohol winds its way through him, his blood pounding hot in his veins. Smoke curls around him comfortably -

\-- it makes him feel happy.

Upstairs, Robin, on her second piece of pie, looks out the window.

Lily looks at her, "Robin, you okay?"

She takes another bite of pie. "Yeah," she says. "I'm fine."


	98. the window

He has a letter tucked in the inside jacket pocket of his favorite suit, edges worn, torn out of a college-ruled notebook years ago.

_Dear thirty-year-old Barney,_

_I hope you've met Dad by now because I really miss him and I just want him to know that James and I are making sure that he doesn't forget about us. In the future, I hope you'll have enough money to take care of mom when she's old so she doesn't have to dance anymore and that you and James will live in houses across from each other. Maybe your kids can play dolls together or something, I know he likes that. I hope the people who beat me up in school are now working for you or something because they deserve it. One day, when you're married with like kids and a dog and stuff, I just hope that whatever you're doing you're happy. Like right now, Ms. Miller is making us write these stupid things and I think its so stupid but those are all the things I want to happen._

Wearing those overalls, standing at the bar, talking to Robin? Somewhere deep down, he hopes the window hasn't closed.


	99. last cigarette ever

She exhales loudly, taps the cigarette carton against the butt of her palm three times. She fishes out the last cigarette – the last cigarette – and places it between her fingers. She doesn't feel ready to let go yet.

No one else is at McClaren's yet. And then Barney comes and sits down. "Last one?"

She shrugs. "Cold turkey." She tries to sound flippant rather than desperate.

"Here," he says, "Let me light it for you." His thumb flicks the little cog; paper sizzles.

She inhales deeply, a comfortable sigh.

"All right?" he asks.

"Mm." She's not ready to let go.


	100. girls vs. suits

At McClaren's Friday night, Lily sits with her back straight, arms crossed over her chest. Arching an eyebrow, she looks Barney right in the eye. "Well?"

Barney takes a sip of his scotch. "Papa scored." Then, "As if there was any doubt."

Robin rolls her eyes. "So are there any other types of women left on the planet you haven't slept with?"

Barney holds his hand poised in the air, thinking. "Nuns."

Marshall shakes his head. "You're not going to get a nun."

"Au contraire, Marshall. Because you're looking at the newest volunteer at St. Ignatius' Sunday School for Boys. You know who teach Sunday School, Marshall? Do you? Nuns."

Robin sighs. "All right, Barney, you're the last person I'd ever want to ask, but since Lily says that Marshall agreeing with me doesn't count—"

Lily nods, sagely. "I don't make the rules, sista, I just play the game."

"—You're the last person who can really judge. I'm hotter than that bartending chick, right?"

He tilts his head, clicks his tongue against his teeth. "I don't know, Robin, she was pretty hot."

She purses her lips.

Then, quietly, when Lily and Marshall are at the bar, he says, "You win."

She smiles. "Thanks." His hands twitch with the slightest movement, inching a little closer.

She licks her lips, unsure of what to do. This isn't new ground, but it isn't particularly familiar ground either. She thinks, what the hell, they're friends. And the word covers a lot of ground. She and Ted were "friends" for a long time before they were more than.

She sets her hand on top of his, watching his face for any reaction. He knows the rules though; his expression doesn't change.

"Thank you," she says, words meted out slowly.

"What are friends for?"


	101. jenkins

Barney stands there, holding Lily's things, trying to shoot the video on her cell phone with the other hand, when Robin nudges his side.

"What? This is hard enough. Who knew Lily had so much stuff?"

"Got to give her props though," Robin says. "She's scrappy." A beat. Then, "Did you ever—" She stops, bites her lip.

He pauses, turns to look at her. "What?"

"No, never mind."

"What do you want to ask me?"

She licks her lips, doesn't say anything.

He sighs. "I never Jenkins'd you, if that's what you want to know."

She exhales. "Okay."

"Okay."


	102. perfect week

"Hold my scotch for a sec?" she says, handing him the tumbler.

He stammers for a bit in protest, but takes it anyway.

She takes the cap and tries it on, smiling at him. She's unsure whether it's because of the alcohol or just the ridiculousness of the occasion, but it's fun.

Lily grins. "Aw, Robin, you look cute."

Robin laughs. "I look like an idiot." He hands her back the tumbler of scotch, taps the visor of her cap. She smiles at him, lifts her tumbler of scotch. "Congratulations on your perfect week."

Marshall tips his head.

Barney smiles.


	103. rabbit or duck

She doesn't know when this happened, but she wants it to stop.

Robin used to think of herself as settled in her ways, comfortable in her identity, and now, and now, her head feels clouded, and she forgets who she is or who she should be, finds herself doing things that she doesn't think would fit with her old self (but who did she used to be? that's the question). She sits out on the fire escape and smokes a cigarette, wondering when the shift happened.

She used to love being single.

She used to love dating.

She never wanted to settle down, never wanted to be the kind of person who would just sit on a couch and talk about how much she hated being ... who she used to be.

The smoke curls around her throat but that too feels unfamiliar, feels strange. Don is a new front moving into her life, something that already comes with preconceptions of love and marriage and commitment and she doesn't know when that happened because when she was with Barney, when they were doing what they were doing, before definitions, they laughed about it. They weren't the people who dealt in love, in marriage, in commitment -

she feels like she's signed a contract she never read.

She calls Barney at two a.m. on Valentine's Day and stammers a bit on the phone as he yawns. She can't think of what to say, but he's always appreciated the open, so she awkwardly blurts, "I need you to tell me who I am."

There's silence. His voice, thick with sleep, says, "What do you mean?"

She laughs. "I'm Ted," she says. "And I don't know when that happened."

He exhales. She can almost hear the crinkle of the fabric of his t-shirt as he shrugs. "We changed each other," he says.

The conversation feels genuine,  _too_ honest ever since they started avoiding each other and not talking, but there's a part of her that still prickles at his voice, still feels like she knows him better - better in some ways than she even knows herself. "It doesn't feel the same."

"It'll get better."

"How do you know?"

He sighs softly. Then, "No matter how much you change, you will never not be awesome."

She doesn't know what to say, so she says, "Good night."

He mumbles something and hangs up.


	104. hooked

It's the most they've talked about what's happened.

She sits across from him and calls herself the girl he most recently dated. (If they're being honest, she's girl number two on that list.

The first one broke his heart.

Jury's still out on the second.)

He talks about the hot pharmaceutical sales reps and she nods.

They sip at their scotch; underneath the table, her ankle brushes his. He clenches his jaw.

Her left hand tries to grip the red vinyl of the seat. The blood rushes in her ears. They're fine now. Honestly. There's nothing more to talk about.


	105. of course

He sits in Riverside Park afterward, holding his ticket in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His clothes are sticking to him because of the water and it's fucking cold, but he figures, tonight's about second chances. Do-overs.

The paper burns with a quiet sizzle.

To be honest, he doesn't know quite what to think. He's - in a way, he feels like he's losing them. She doesn't feel like the same Robin and he doesn't feel quite the same either. She's out on a date now, a romantic date, with someone she  _should_ be seeing. Not Barney Stinson, womanizer, businessman, corporate hero, but someone who actually bought into the Ted thing, the Lily-and-Marshall thing, someone who can see her for who she really is. And looking back, he thinks, taking another long drag, he tried to do it, tried to treat her the way she should have been treated, and he thought it was fine. He thought - and now things are different.

He's seen a lot of women cry because of him, but...

('But she's different' is the truth he can't really say aloud.)

He loves her,

 _loved_ her, past tense, because they're over and done with now and that's what this is supposed to represent, the Universe correcting itself because they were never supposed to work out. Since their breakup, he's slept with practically twenty percent of the hot women in Manhattan and he doesn't feel any different - he always leaves before his thoughts come back to haunt him, before the morning comes with the realization that none of these women are Robin, none of these women will ever be like Robin, and not that he's got anything left to prove to anybody, but it's different.

It's different.

 _Point of order, Mr. Speaker_. He doesn't fuck Anita.

And this is it, he thinks, final curtain and all that shit, because, because she's already got the distant sights of a white horse in her eyes and he knows that it's over. She's moved beyond what they had even if he (maybe possibly potentially) hasn't moved on yet (hypothetically speaking).

He flicks the cigarette stub onto the ground and heads for his apartment.

Robin calls him later, breathless and laughing, thanking him. He's been redeemed, he thinks, but he feels this tightness in his chest that he assumes to be moving on because that's what he feels, this moving-on emotion that everyone is talking about, and maybe it's indifference and maybe it's not because he heads into his kitchen for some whiskey and lifts up the matchbook instead.

He strikes the match, watches the flame burn down until it tinges his fingers, until he drops it in the sink and the flame dies, his fingertips burning with residual heat.

Robin sleeps with Don; she tells them with a smile.

(He punches a wall, splits his knuckles.

When he goes to visit his mom, she runs her fingertips lightly over the small scars. "Barn'," she whispers.)

This won't do; this is not how things work in Manhattan.

Robin smiles at him from across the booth; his hand tightens around the tumbler of scotch.

(They can't play this game forever;

surely one of them will eventually die.)

Marshall talks about Don. She laughs.


	106. say cheese

They spend the rest of the night looking over old photos.

Marshall, grinning, hands her a stack from last year. She thumbs through them slowly, stopping at one where Barney has his arm around her shoulders, looking at her. She can't exactly recall when they took it. It's candid, but his eyebrow is still arched. She laughs and holds it up to him.

"Remember..." she murmurs, but she's struck by the way he looks at her.

Her breath catches in her throat.

"Yeah," he says, reaching to take the photo from her. His thumb brushes against her knuckle. "I remember."


	107. zoo or false

He sits in the green room as Robin finishes up.

"Hey," she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "You still here?"

"I'm waiting for Ted," he says.

She smiles. "Thanks for coming, by the way."

Don walks in, then, and he stands by Robin and sets his hand on the small of her back, introducing himself to Barney with a firm handshake and already, Barney doesn't really like the guy.

"I've got to go meet with my producer." She steps to him and wraps him in a quick hug. "See you later tonight."

The smell of her perfume lingers.


	108. home wreckers

Robin stretches, joints cracking loudly. "I can't believe Ted bought a  _house_."

Barney snorts. "I can."

"It feels like - like Ted's growing up, you know? And I'm just kind of here."

He looks up at her. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm working at a job I'm not happy with, my career's going nowhere, and I'm chasing things I'm not even sure I want."

"Is that why you cried at the wedding?"

She knocks her shoulder against his. "Barney," she sighs.

"You're not Ted," he says. "I'm not Ted."

"Thanks for clearing that up for me."

He exhales. "I cried at the wedding because..."

She arches a brow. "Because...?" she prompts.

"I'm..." he hesitates, "We don't want what everyone else wants. That's not - that's not a bad thing. But sometimes, like - I went to that wedding and they made me think that maybe, maybe that's what I'm supposed to want." He reaches in his inner jacket pocket and pulls out a flask. He says  _fuck it_ before he takes a long swig.

He extends the flask to her. She takes it.

Raising it to him, she repeats his toast and drinks. She leaves a lipstick print.


	109. twin beds

She's changing for him.

She's changing for him when she always said she'd never change for anyone, not even for Barney Stinson, because she's  _Robin fucking Scherbatsky_ and she's awesome in her own right, so why the hell would she? When she stands there and tells him that she can't hang out with them so she can protect this, can make sure that what she has with Don isn't sabotaged, his head throbs and his jaw clenches and part of him knows this isn't from the hangover.

It took him years to admit he loved her, months for them to start defining things, and he feels like Don - fucking perfect, angelic, godly Don - and Robin are moving in weeks and days, minutes and hours, seconds and seconds. She's moving in with him. She's moving in with him when she never even talked about it with him.

And yes, he knows he hasn't changed. But change doesn't come like a bomb, fast and explosive, and they talked about it (for fuck's sake, they sat down and talked about it), about how they were Barney-and-Robin, separate yet together, and they were going to stay themselves because they just worked. And then they didn't. And his mind can't wrap itself around the nuances of her logic because, because she's changing for him. For Don. The guy she couldn't stand, the guy who pissed her off so much who's suddenly become the perfect boyfriend.

Ted shoots him a look like he's made them lose one of the best friends they've ever had, but he stares resolutely at the ceiling because it is not his fault. It is not his fault that Robin is going off on this brave new relationship adventure. He swallows the emotion that rises in his throat and makes his head spin.

"Good job, Barn Door," she said, sarcasm curling around her words.

He wants her back, he thinks. It's not just wanting a toy back; he wants  _his friend_  back. He wants the real Robin and not this cheap knockoff; part of him speculates that maybe he helped to destroy the old Robin. But it isn't his fault, he thinks, it isn't his fault because - if she destroyed him just as well, does their mutual destruction cancel everything else out?

He's been fucking everything that moves to try and rediscover who he used to be. And now, and now, he's losing her as well.

He can't do this. He can't do this, he can't do this because, fuck, remember when he did this with Shannon and it was miserable? He swore he'd never do it again, never let his heart get broken, because shit like this always happens, because now Robin's in his head and in his heart and in his  _head_ and he can't get her out, can't exorcise her particular demon because, well, maybe he doesn't want to, and how can he fix himself if he doesn't want to fix himself?

-

Ted calls him later to tell him that Robin's moved out, gone.

He slams his fist into the wall. His knuckles bleed.

(maybe, maybe if he breaks himself, someone can put him back together.)

When he meets Lily for coffee later, she lifts his hand up, examines the bloodied knuckles. "Barney, what happened?"

He chuckles, faking a grin. "You know what they say, if it ain't broke, break it to fix it."

She frowns.


	110. robots vs. wrestlers

When she walks in the door, he jumps up to hug her.

She's missed him -  _them,_ she thinks. It's been too strange not seeing them.

She buys the next round of drinks even though she can hear the slight slur in Barney's voice. As they nurse their beers, she lets Marshall excitedly jabber about Robots vs. Wrestlers as Ted tries to finish reciting his Emerson poem.

Barney leans against her shoulder and murmurs something about not wanting to die alone.

She helps him home later. "You all right?" she asks.

He blinks at her, once, twice. "Fine."

She sighs.


	111. the wedding bride

She licks her lips, tosses her hair over her shoulder. "So," she says, fingers curling around her tumbler of scotch, "what's  _my_ baggage?"

Lily elbows Marshall who leans on the table. Barney shoots him a look.

"What," Marshall says, "We're not listening. Go ahead."

Barney looks from them to her.

"Um, you're a gun nut," he says, rolling his eyes.

She sniffs. "That's fair. You know what yours is?"

He snorts. "Yeah. Being awesome."

She smirks at him, eyes following the line of his jaw as he stares ahead in a show of nonchalance.

Lily exhales loudly, "Oh,  _come on_!"

Robin crinkles her nose. "You're a  _little_ sleazy."

"Ugh, Robin, we knew that already!" Marshall says.

Barney smoothly drains the rest of his scotch. He turns to her, voice rough, "You  _love_ it."

She scoffs.


	112. doppelgangers

He calls her up later that night. "I'm glad you decided to stay."

She doesn't say anything. She knows that sometimes these relapses happen with him, with them; this is shaky ground for him.

She exhales loudly. "I stayed for Don."

He clears his throat.

"And then he took the job." She coughs out a laugh. "For once in my life, I picked a guy over my career, and it didn't work out."

Barney heaves an exaggerated sigh of disgust. " _Relationships_. See, this is why I never get into them. Too messy."

Silence on the line.

"I - good night."


	113. big days

It almost feels like things are back to normal when she sits down.

Ted being Ted, Marshall and Lily negotiating couplehood, and Robin just being hot and awesome again.

Her bare knees tilted towards him, she splays out against the back of the booth, Cheeto caught between her fingers

His thoughts catch somewhere between  _you're a mess_ and  _you're so hot_ and laced between the consonants and vowels, he knows he'd find _and i wouldn't have you any other way_. He swallows his doubts.

She licks the orange cheese powder from her fingers. "I'm going outside for a cigarette."

He slides along the vinyl booth and falls into step behind her, feels like it's never been any other way.


	114. cleaning house

Before they head back to Manhattan, he sits on the back stoop of his house, smoking a cigarette.

She comes to sit next to him, fidgeting with her hands. He holds the cigarette out to her. She shakes her head.

"Barney," she says, faltering. "You know, I ... never really had the greatest relationship with my dad either."

He coughs out a laugh. "You don't have to do this whole... understanding thing, you know."

"What?" He doesn't say anything.

"I was only trying to - "

He doesn't even look at her. She brushes her palms on her jeans and leaves.


	115. unfinished

The next night they're at the bar, Robin slides into the booth and says, "Guess who forgot the asshole's number!"

Lily sniffs the air dramatically. "You know what, Robin?"

"You don't smell any poop?"

"I don't smell any poop!"

They high-five.

When Ted brings them their round of beers, he waves his hand with characteristic drama, squinting as he says, "You ever really think you can be finished with something? Or anything?"

"You're thinking about the GNB job now, aren't you?" Marshall says.

Ted laughs. "No, I mean, in life. You know, how Karen came back into my life, and – I don't know, I guess it just feels like there should be more."

Robin browses through her cell phone contacts casually, marveling at the way the names jump at the Ds.

"Who cares?" Lily says with a snort. "It's done now, and that's what matters. Unless we're talking about Karen. Because her, I want to punch in the face."

Ted, Marshall, and Lily get involved in their own argument about Karen and college and dorm rules of sex that she half-tunes out when Barney jostles her in the side.

"Watch it," she says.

Scrolling through, she stops on his name.


	116. subway wars

After her sort-of date with Marshall's friend goes bust, she splits a cab with him.

"Damn Marshall and Lily," he says.

She busies herself with staring out the window, watching the street numbers change. They're still in this weird post-breakup place even though they're trying so hard not to let things be weird.

"Are you ever going to tell me about what happened?"

Robin drums her fingers on the side, flits her gaze towards the weather report in the mini-tv screen in the cab. "It doesn't matter."

Barney doesn't apologize for things, that's not how he works, but she can sense his apology anyway.

"It's okay," she says. "Really."

"You know, you really – you can talk to me about anything."

"Peas and carrots, peas and carrots," she says.

"Except when I'm trying to pick someone up."

She laughs. "When aren't you trying to pick someone up?"

He tilts his head in concession of the point.

The cab ride the rest of the way to her place is pretty quiet, and they settle into kind of an uncomfortable silence.

"Well, you won today," he says.

She hums, smiling, as the cab slows to a stop outside her apartment.

"Thanks," she says.


	117. architect of destruction

"I know you're dying to ask," she says, as Ted talks about his apartment being attacked by eco-terrorists.

("They were kids throwing eggs at your window, Ted," Lily says.)

"What?" he says, trying to sound shocked or confused – she isn't sure which – as she sips at her glass of wine.

"If I ever talked about you to Lily."

As if on cue, Lily arches an eyebrow at him.

He snorts. "The Barnacle doesn't need to be graded."

She grins. "Well, if you're sure..."

It doesn't take much for him to crack. "No, tell me, tell me – wait, no, don't. Don't."


	118. baby talk

After Robin chases out Barney's weird lay of the day, he offers her a scotch in gratitude. She plops down on his couch, switches on his TV and surfs for the hockey game.

(To which he responds: "This is a hockey-free zone, Scherbatsky. No hockey.")

"Thanks," she says, when he hands her the tumbler. "It's been weird with Becky at work, and Ted dating her."

"Sleeping with her," Barney corrects.

Robin shrugs.

"So Ted didn't feel needed. Who the fuck cares about Ted's feelings? You're not there to make him feel important."

She smiles, sipping at her scotch.

"You're awesome."


	119. canning randy

He calls her the minute he sees her commercial, and does that really annoying thing where he slows down and enunciates every syllable of her name. "Robin Scherbatsky! Why didn't you tell me you were in this short film of Oscar-worthy proportions?"

"Shut up, Barney."

"You know what, you should call your old record company and set up a self-endorsement deal. Robin Sparkles peddling Depends."

"They're not Depends! Depends are their rival." She thinks about hanging up on him when he says, "You're really letting this Becky chick get in your head."

Robin sighs. "She's just young and perky and blonde and like everything – you know what, this is like Kelly Ripa replacing Kathie Lee. No one cared about Kathie Lee anymore."

"Are you really comparing yourself to Kathie Lee?"

"You know what I mean."

"Robin, you've been wanting to do this your whole life – well, except for that part of your life when you were probably jealous of Debbie Gibson – and you're better than she is."

She smiles. "Thanks."

"If you want, I could get my people to write her some angry fan mail."

"You taped the commercial, didn't you?"

" _Yeah_ , I did. Come on, Robin, I'm only human."


	120. natural history

She watches him at the bar, downing shot after shot of scotch. She's not sure what the procedure is here. It's not like she has the greatest history with fathers either.

"Hey," she says. "You want to go touch the dinosaur bones?"

He gives a weak snort. "Been there, done that."

She sets her hand on his arm. "Come on. The Egyptian exhibits miss you."

He downs the rest of his scotch and she takes a seat next to him, weakly trying to pull him away. "Why wouldn't he tell me?" he says, voice thick with alcohol.

"I don't know."


	121. glitter

She's splitting a drink with Jessica and casually talking about the playoffs when Jess raises her eyebrows, leans in close and whispers, "You know, that guy in the suit keeps looking this way."

The bar has already erupted into a spontaneous belting of the (Canadian) national anthem.

"He probably wants to get in your pants," Robin says, with a snort.

Jess stirs at her Cosmo. "I don't know. I've got a kid. Kids are baggage."

"You don't know Barney."

They talk pleasantries for a while and they exchange numbers and promise to keep in touch, but somewhere deep down, Robin knows that this is just another nicety.

"He found me, you know. And I don't think it was because he wanted to buy the suit." Jessica sets her hand on top of Robin's.

Robin drains the rest of her drink.

"Hey, can I ask you a kind of weird favor?"

Robin laughs. "Sure. Why not?"

"Would you be up for doing 'Sandcastles in the Sand' as a duet?" She looks down with a laugh. "I really liked that song."

"Robin Sparkles always accepts requests!"

Across the room, Barney winks.

"Never rule anything out," Jessica says.

Robin smiles. "Whatever you say."


	122. blitzgiving

Barney is really, really drunk and Robin can't really figure out what they're supposed to do with him. Lily's still talking to Ted's mortal enemy (whose name she can't remember), and things are kind of moving at super-slow BBC documentary speed right now.

"What's happening?" Barney slurs from the floor.

Robin's got some kind of tiara on her head, and everything is half-blurry and spinning.

"You are asking the wrong person."

"Okay. Can you transfer my call?"

"What?"

"Transfer my  _call_."

Robin squints. "Does that mean sex?"

"Why? Do you want sex? Everything means sex."

She kicks him.

"That hurt!"


	123. the mermaid theory

When Marshall's half-asleep, she dials Barney on her phone. "Is there a lady version of the mermaid theory?"

"Scherbatsky, are you  _drunk_?"

"Answer the question!" she slurs.

"What was the question?"

"What about married ladies and single dudes, like Ted and Zoey? Does she see him as a manatee? Is there another theory?"

"Well, Robin," Barney says in that intellectual voice, "I've got a doctorate in the Bro Code, but I have no idea about the girl code."

"The girl code?"

"Yeah."

"Ugh," she grumbles. "I hate you."

He laughs. "Drink a glass of water before you go to sleep."


	124. false positive

When she breaks the news to everyone at MacLaren's, he buys them a round of drinks. "What's this for?" she says.

He shakes his head as he raises his glass in toast. "You're not a ... coin flip bimbo." He turns his head towards a sorority girl in the corner. " _That girl_ , on the other hand..."

She punches him in the arm.

"No, seriously. I think your new job will be a lot better for you than ... reporting on puppies that help their owners take out the garbage."

"Shut up. It wasn't like that."

"It was  _exactly_  like that."


	125. bad news

It's the silence that kills her. She can't think of what to say, even as she sits shaking, the phone in her hand, crying.

She loves Marshall and Lily but the thought of parents dying always brings her to think of her parents and –

She hangs up on Ted and Barney calls.

He asks her if she's all right and the dam breaks. She breathes the occasional word here and there between her sobs, and he doesn't speak.

The line is quiet.

He stays on with her, and they listen to each other breathe and think.

They pretend everything's okay.


	126. last words

On the flight back to Manhattan, he ends up sitting next to Ted and Robin. Ted's trying to crack a few jokes, but the gravitas of the funeral still hasn't passed.

Robin fidgets with her phone, even though it's off.

"It's weird, right?" she whispers, her magical Mary Poppins bag left in Minnesota. "This whole ... thing. It's weird."

Barney shoots off a quick text to James before they take off.

A few rows behind them, Marshall and Lily are just holding hands, leaning on each other.

Ted slides down in his seat.

There's no turbulence the whole flight back.


	127. oh honey

She calls him on her lunch break. "I heard you cried like a little girl to Honey yesterday."

He snorts. "Pssh. You want to know what Honey and I did, you can come over here, get naked, and - "

"Uh, no, thanks."

"Your loss, Scherbatsky."

"Good thing she got you on tape, then, huh?"

"What?" He pauses. "Robin, no – you don't have a tape."

"You want to bet?"

His voice drops lower, and he whispers, "Robin, that was – that was stuff about my dad. You won't ... you won't tell anyone?"

She clears her throat. "Yeah," she says. "Sure."


	128. desperation day

She has coffee with Nora a few days after laser tag. "Robin, I really want to thank you for setting this up. It was actually really great!"

Robin swallows hard. "Yeah? I'm glad you had fun. He doesn't get along with a lot of people, so."

Nora laughs. "Well, I think not many people see past the bullshit is all."

Robin takes a big gulp of her coffee.

"And," Nora says, leaning in conspiratorially, "he didn't try to sleep with me after laser tag. I consider it an improvement."

She smiles. "I'm glad he's found someone who doesn't hate him."


	129. garbage island

It feels like he's forgotten how to read Robin.

He knows that they've got history that's kind of hard to forget about, that it took him way longer to fall in love with her than it has to fall in _infatuation_  with Nora, and that it was all kind of quiet where Nora is all these loud declarative things his body seems to do without asking. And he can't help but find that the way that Robin keeps pushing it is just ... misleading. It's confusing. And he doesn't know how to read it.

It's been a long time since he's ever thought about having a fruitful Valentine's Day, but here she is now, Nora, in big screaming letters. And, to make things worse, she's kind of a female Ted that isn't a Ted. (Not that he has those kinds of thoughts about Ted. Bros are bros, but then Barney draws the line.)

She's probably the kind of person that wants to get married and get a dog and have kids and he can never really see himself  _doing_ those things on purpose.

But Robin keeps telling him to go for it, and Nora's number is right there in his phone, and for once in his life, everything seems set for him. Easy.

Robin leaves him tips on what to do for a second date and it doesn't take him long before he decides to call. Nora says all the right things and she laughs at him over the line and he knows that part of this is going to be the chase because she isn't going to sleep with him right away. (Although part of him hopes that these weird feelings aren't going to interfere with his daily intake of other hot girls.)

They make plans.

(Later, Robin congratulates him.)


	130. a change of heart

In MacLaren's, when Barney tells them all that he's in love with Nora, Robin feels a strange pull in her stomach. She and Barney had something, but it wasn't like they were that in love. They were just... them.

But there's something so painful to see him figure it out so simply and easily with someone else, to know that for him, love could just as easily be another quick thing that falls into his lap. And Nora? Nora is perfect, down to the hair and the perfectly matching shoes and the make-up and the accent. And she plays laser tag and is a nice person. She probably helps old people cross the street.

Robin knows there's nothing wrong with Nora, and she knows that, save the occasional sentimental remark, Barney is just the same as he's ever been. But there's something logical and simple about the way that he and Nora get on in a way that she and Barney never did.

It leaves a sour taste on the back of her tongue.

She lies for him anyway.


	131. legendaddy

Barney spends that night drinking until he can't remember his own fucking name, until he's got a whiskey bottle in one hand and he's hanging around in his apartment, throwing things just to break them.

Robin comes over just as he smashes another cup against the counter. "How are you doing?" she asks.

"You know what," he says, rage tinting his words, "I'm glad he was gone. I'm glad he wasn't there. What kind of – what kind of – " It's then she realizes that he's shaking. "What kind of person could – "

She's holding his shoulders then, his body tense, and by the time she realizes he's crying, he's halfheartedly pushing her towards the door.


	132. the exploding meatball sub

She gets a cheeseburger at lunch and tries to think of every possible conversation topic except the one she really wants to talk about. Barney just keeps staring longingly at the meatbull subs.

"Barney, I know you don't want to talk about this, but – "

His lips twitch. "But what?"

"Maybe we should head to MacLaren's later," she says, stuttering. "Uh, you know, have a drink?"

He tilts his head at her. "Yeah, sure. Why?"

"Always nice to booze it up, am I right?" she says with a forced laugh.

She sets her hand on top of his, squeezes it.


	133. hopeless

Robin can't help wondering how much he's told his father about her.

It isn't exactly something that comes up in conversation and she can tell that things aren't as great as he would have them believe. And the list of things that he rattles off there too – the getting married and being happy – it still all feels so strange to her.

To be honest, she still finds it unsettling. Her palms itch and she tries to avoid his gaze. And the whole time, he keeps talking about his dad, as if they haven't learned that running to the past to avoid the future always fails.

When Barney's dad arrives, they do a quick handshake – getting reacquainted with all of Barney's friends, she supposes – and he lingers on her a little longer. When he looks over at Barney, she notices the way he fidgets with his cuff links, the way he grins, his face pointed away from her.

It's all too similar to the shit that went down a year ago, but she still can't herself from thinking –  _what if_.


	134. the perfect cocktail

She goes out for drinks with Barney after Ted's big reveal. He doesn't say much and she lets him order his usual scotch. They don't talk much.

She crosses and uncrosses her ankles, stirring at her drink absentmindedly. "It really bothers you, huh? This best friend thing."

He arches an eyebrow and takes another long drink. "Ted and Marshall are my bros. And that's just violating every by-law in the Bro Code there is."

She buys him another scotch.

When they stumble out a few hours later, he incredibly drunk and she mildly so, she says, "How's that for bro code, huh?"

He mumbles his thanks against the shoulder of her jacket.


	135. landmarks

They're slowly slipping back into the positions of their old friendship again. It isn't as hard as she thought it'd be when they were in the midst of their break-up, but it still isn't settled yet. They keep falling into these traps of one-on-one friend dates that straddle the line a little closer than she's comfortable with. Still, it's times like these when she feels like this is when they most understand each other.

"It isn't like that for them, you know?" he says.

She hums. "What do you mean?"

"Ted, Lily, and Marshall. They know who they are outside of their jobs. Me? And you?"

She drains the rest of her tumbler and he clicks his tongue nervously. "You're right," she says. It's only recently that they seem to have lost all of their footing, she thinks; it isn't just about their relationship but about how they see themselves. Nothing fits anymore and they keep trying on other people's clothing only to discover that it never fit them to begin with.

She looks down at the table, pushes her thumbnail along one of the ridges in the wood.

"It isn't a bad thing," she says.

He sniffs. "Sure."


	136. challenge accepted

Robin has never believed in having regrets.

It's always seemed counterintuitive to her because at one point, she must have wanted to make that decision or choose that door or, you know, whatever. The problem is that watching Barney do this is making her feel ... not  _regretful_ , but –

She's considering it.

After all of the awful things that happened when they were together, after the disaster that it was, after all that it did to the two of them, she's honestly considering what it would be like to do it again. As much as she doesn't believe in regret, she does believe in relapse a lot. And this feels different than everything else, than Ted, than Don. She and Barney were friends first and friends after, but in a way that's totally different than her relationship to Ted. She doesn't want to sleep with Ted. Occasionally, she feels the tension when it's just the two of them – her and Barney – and it feels like they're too close to something to ignore it as they have been doing.

Barney dusts off the sleeve of his jacket in a show of nonchalance before walking up towards her.

She wrinkles her nose. "You're not going to buy her orchids, are you?"

He frowns. "Am I that bad?"

She covers her mouth when she laughs. "A little bit."

"New is always better," he says. His voice is unusually quiet, the kind of voice that was generally reserved for their occasional serious conversations at three in the morning, when they were talking about life or how odd it was to be isolated from the others in the group. They have never been Marshall and Lily. They will never be Ted. They can only ever be themselves. Together.

"New is always better," she repeats, and in the distance, Ranjit is leaning against the car, waving at them.

In the car, they don't talk and Ranjit fills the silence with anecdotes about his wife and his children and they both make a show of listening.

She doesn't know what to do with her hands so she digs her fingernails into her palms; he doesn't seem to notice and she isn't sure if she's grateful for that or resentful. Her life feels too much like a soap opera – people come in and people come out but it is always the same story, the same patterns, the same mistakes. And now, it feels time enough for a relapse.

She wonders if he loves her.

"So you and Nora, huh?"

He coughs out a small laugh.

This is a mistake, she thinks. Going down this road is a mistake. It was a mistake the first time, it will be a mistake the second time. It was a mistake with Ted. It was a mistake with Don.

She looks at him, his face turned towards the window.

Part of her feels like it wouldn't be. This time –

The ride back to the city, they don't say anything.


	137. best man

They've always been on the same page, and for the first time, Robin feels like they might have lost that.

She's trying to deal with this - really, she is - but it all seems so confusing. They're at a wedding. They're at a wedding with Ted the Commitment-Seeking, and Marshall and Lily, the already-married, and then there's the two of them. Deny, deny, deny has been their -  _her_ \- policy for so long that she's not sure how this is going to work.  _I don't have feelings for you anymore. I'm ready to move on and see other people. And you should be able to see Nora._ The words are there and she knows them, but -

It's when he's right there, standing next to her, smelling like him, his shirt slightly rumpled that she can't help but think about how much she misses him.

She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing quite comes out.

He tilts his head, squinting at her.

It's after he calls Nora that he comes and brings her a glass of champagne. The rest of the wedding guests have filtered out, too traumatized by the fight and drunk Marshall. "Thanks," she says, lifting it towards him in toast.

"What a wedding, huh?"

She chuckles. "At least it wasn't because of Ted's best man speech."

"Not really, anyway."

Barney sets his palm on her shoulder, his hand warm. "Thanks for helping me out with Nora," he says. "I'm ... a wreck with this kind of stuff. You remember."

Her laugh is stilted. "Yeah, I remember." She drains the entire glass; his phone rings.

"I have to - " he says.

"Yeah," she says, waving him off. "Go."

When she leaves, the reception hall is completely empty, flower petals crushed beneath her shoe.


	138. the naked truth

Robin knows him.

Or at least, Robin thinks she knows him. And this? This isn't him. It doesn't feel like him. Grand romantic gestures were never his thing – never hers either – and this whole thing with Nora feels...

She doesn't know how it feels. It's too much like two pages of a book that stick together, impossible to separate. This is page 17, this is page 19 – 18 is lost. This was who she was, this is who she wants to be – it's the present that's difficult.

And there are some days when she lies in bed and she thinks this is ridiculous, that she shouldn't be begrudigng his right to be happy. But in the moments before she falls asleep, it will hit her then, just how lonely she feels.

He always understood her. And now she's losing him too.

They were so simple together, the two of them – just an accident, falling together and then falling apart. And Nora isn't that. He thinks about her, he constructs situations, he plans, and what if that was what he really needed all along? What if she is another story to tell on the wayside towards The One for him, even if he doesn't believe in it like Ted does?

Even with how short their time was together, they always made sense on some level. Even if only to her. And now Barney's dressing up in someone else's life and it doesn't make sense (but it  _does_ , it does, if only because all kids have to grow up sometime)

and Barney calls her up at midnight that night and tells her that Nora came back, she came back, and they're going on a date and they're not fixed, but he's trying.

He's trying now.

Robin's honestly not sure what hurts more.


	139. the ducky tie

"On a scale of one to ten," he says, as Ted heads off to pay off the rest of their tab, "how awful does this look?"

She squints, tilting her head. "Honestly?"

He winces. "Yeah."

"It's..." She laughs. "Yeah, no, it's pretty awful."

He shoves his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight from side to side. "So. Victoria, huh?"

She looks over at Ted. "Yeah. Weird that she showed up again, right?" He hums. "It was a weird time. For all of us. Just...weird."

"We weren't really friends then," he says.

She looks up at him, reaches to finger the end of the tie. "No," she says. "We weren't."


	140. the stinson missile crisis

She's not going to repeat her mistakes.

Running into Victoria a few days ago, that's one thing, but repeating her sins with Nora? Robin likes to think that she's grown from that, that she's surpassed that level of pettiness. (The court-mandated therapist advises her that no, she hasn't. Still, she's not sure he quite grasps the level of her ability at denial.)

So she sets it up and she waits for the pins to fall and halfway down the block from McClaren's, she can't help but notice how she's become a sad rehash of a 90210 episode.

People can change (or so she hears).


	141. field trip

The first time Kevin meets Barney is strange.

The reputation precedes him; Kevin knows too much about him, about Robin's relationship to him, and he's unsure how this whole thing is going to go. Robin keeps telling him it's fine, it'll be fine, that they're over and done with, and besides, Barney has Nora now, but Kevin still has his notes. People don't fix how hung up they are on other people so quickly. Still, he really likes her and Robin's - she's incredible.

Barney's surprising. He's louder than Kevin would have suspected, but that's all there is to him - it's a lot of masking.

Robin holds his hand under the table; Kevin misses the way Barney's jaw clenches.


	142. mystery vs. history

Kevin tries not to overanalyze his relationship with Robin, but it's hard. It's different hearing about her friends and seeing them in person. They're a mess. They're an incalculable mess.

But it's really Barney and Ted that he can't quite figure out. They're still friends, the three of them – Barney and Ted and Robin – which given what she's told him about their histories together, he can't quite wrap his mind around.

He's making dinner for her one night, busy stirring the tomato sauce in the kitchen, when he hears Robin's phone buzz on the table. They're in one of their research modes for Ted again, busy swapping gossip about the latest girl he's set to go out with.

"Can you get that for me?" she calls from the bedroom.

"Sure."

It can't end well, he thinks, this house of cards they've built for themselves, but it isn't his place. It's their history and he doesn't have a place in it.

"Kevin?"

He checks her phone. "You know what, I'll just bring it to you."


	143. noretta

She meets Barney for a drink when Kevin's at the concert.

They still haven't quite fallen back into normal since he started dating Nora, but he makes a show of it. She opts for white wine instead of her usual scotch and he turns to look at her, head tilted. "Kevin's softening you up," he says.

She snickers. "Please. Like Nora isn't doing the same to you."

He arches a brow. "I'd say she does the opposite."

Robin grimaces. He coughs out a laugh and she shifts in her seat, fidgeting with her phone. This used to be easier, she thinks. Or maybe she used to be better at convincing herself that their friendship was always simple.

The silences always manage to creep into their conversations now somehow like plants that grow between cracks in the pavement; it reminds her how much they've grown apart.

"You really slept with Nora even though she reminded you of your mom?"

He taps a beat against the edge of his glass. "She made me watch  _The Sound of Music_ ," he says.

"Well," Robin says, hiding her laugh behind her hand, "I'm sure you'll get there. You are sixteen, going on seventeen."

He kicks her seat.


	144. the slutty pumpkin returns

She sends him Canadian trinkets every day for the next two weeks. He shows up at the bar with the wrapped gift basket of various kinds of maple syrup she got him, pout already in place. "Stop doing this!" he says.

Marshall and Lily just high-five her.

"Oh, who can dish but can't take?" she says. "Because mama's got a whole lot of ammunition left."

Lily hums. "Go 'head, Robin. Tell us what you got."

"Ten provinces and three territories' worth there, Lily. And you didn't Mountie up so this might go on for a while."

Barney pulls one of the bottles out, watches the syrup shift in the glass. "Maybe if I down an entire one of these, it'll kill me."

Robin taps his arm. "Don't worry, Barney. That's legitimate maple. Grade A."

He drops his head to the table.


	145. disaster averted

Kissing him now feels different than all the other times, and she can't help wondering if part of that is because she knows that it's wrong. In the same way that she must have known kissing Ted was wrong when he was with Victoria, but she didn't know that then.

And she knows now.

And she has Kevin. She has Kevin, a perfectly nice, normal – well, relatively – guy who likes her and could love her even though she's too messed up to function. And she's throwing that away to go through this with Barney again because somehow the first three thousand times they've done this haven't been evidence enough that every time they try to be together, they end up falling apart.

His lips are dry and he tastes like salt and all she can think of is when they were standing out in the rain outside McClaren's, when he had his hands in his pockets and tried to apologize for pulling the same stupid shit that he always does. It's the version of him that they never ever really see, and she knows that she's seen that Barney more than the others, but it still stuns her every time.

This is stupid. And she doesn't even know if knowing that it's wrong makes it better or worse. She has Kevin and he could love her, but that doesn't seem to make her as giddy, as lightheaded, or as vaguely nauseous as it does when Barney pulls this shit.

Her hand finds the line of his jaw, the small scratchy stubble that's already there, her fingers pressing against the nape of his neck, and he groans into her mouth.

"Are you sure?" he says between kisses.

And she doesn't know. They have always been this  _thing_ – him and her – and she's never taken the time, never wanted to fit them into a box, never wanted to explain whatever it is they were doing. They've been repeating past mistakes for long enough, too long to pretend that they haven't learned any better.

"Yes," she says.

Hurricane Irene descends on Manhattan and everyone buys survival supplies and boards up doors and windows and hopes for the worst. It seems too appropriate somehow. She's never been prepared for this. Never been prepared for the quiet way that he enters her life, the loud way that he announces his presence in front of other people, the way that he does these little things in private to make sure that she knows who he is. Even if he doesn't.

And the only time she can really understand herself is when she's around him. It adds up – the mistakes, the lies, the moments in her life and when she's sitting down with him, he reminds her that they can do this, they can make mistakes and fuck up and somehow still be here and still have friends like Ted and Lily and Marshall. They still have each other.

"We're messed up," he tells her once over scotch. "That's just how this works."

She was slightly drunk then. Or maybe a lot drunk – she honestly can't remember – but she was sipping at another drink. A gin and tonic or something towards the end of the night. She couldn't look at him – she remembers that too – and she'd said, "So, what, we're not supposed to try to be better people?"

He swallowed and drained the rest of his drink. "Of course we're supposed to try," he said. "But trying doesn't always work."

And here she is in the back of the cab and all she can think is that she can try harder.

Just not this time.

"Do you know what we're doing?" he says.

And the cab driver is sneaking looks at them in the rear view mirror and she should be creeped out, she should be shocked, she should be fixing the mistake that she's making but she can't. Everything about this feels too comfortable, too familiar for her to let go of so easily; it's like quitting cigarettes – even though they all committed to it, she still has a pack of her favourites at the bottom of her purse and she knows that Barney knows and maybe Marshall and Lily too, but not Ted because, at the end of the day, she knows Ted would judge her for it. She isn't built to be the same kind of person that the Teds and the Marshalls and the Lilys are, and that's just a fact.

She brushes her nose against his and his teeth graze her bottom lip.

"This is so stupid," she says. "We shouldn't be – "

And he presses another kiss against her lips, slow and soft, and he says, "Maybe we're just stupid people."

She doesn't even know where they're going anymore, can't remember the address she gave the cab driver. There's her office, there's his place, and somewhere, Kevin is heading to his mother's birthday party because that's what nice, stable, adult boyfriends do. They go to their parents' birthday parties and they sign up for Weird Al concerts that they don't even enjoy just to impress their girlfriend and they help paint nurseries and they buy flowers and cook dinner and just  _know_.

There's never supposed to be any confusion with these adult relationships.

But she's confused all of the time. There was Ted, and Ted and Victoria, and her, wherever she fit into that mess. And she keeps trying to fit herself into places she doesn't belong. She keeps putting herself in the line of fire, and she tried once, with Don, to be that person, and if that wasn't a reminder that she isn't cut out for this, then she doesn't know what it is. And now there are four of them – Barney and Nora, and her and Kevin – and neither of them belong here, and definitely not here in the backseat of the cab.

She should feel guilty, and she should stop.

They keep pushing forward, she and Barney, and one day, she thinks, they're just going to run into a wall. Like one of those huge Hollywood-movie kind of explosive train wrecks where the track just disappears from beneath the car and everything collapses on itself.

It's going to happen, and she wishes she could stop working towards it.

But here they are –

He says, "My place?"

She swallows, and there's a sharp bitter taste on the back of her tongue she can't place. "Sure."


	146. tick tick tick

Barney would laugh if it didn't hurt so much.

* * *

Behind the bar, after his sixth shot, he laughs so hard he has to brace one hand against the wall to stay standing.

(Someone asks if he's okay, and he can't figure out what the answer is. Like the tail-end of a joke, he'll get it. And it'll be hysterical. Just wait.)

There are gaps in his memory but he feels young again, waiting to join the Peace Corps, waiting for something incredible to happen, like that  _West Side Story_ song before everything goes to shit and everyone dies. That's what it feels like -

There is Shannon and Shannon's laughter and it echoes in his head and he can't remember where he put his keys (or his shoes, to think of it) and he has to take a cab but he can't remember how that happens or how he does that or where his phone is.

He calls Ted first.

Then, Ranjit.

No, Ted. Totally Ted.

* * *

Ted picks him up and it's then that Barney realizes that Ted totally looks like a muppet, the blue one with the hook nose. (Ted doesn't seem to take it as the compliment that it clearly is.)

"Dude," Ted says, "You're trashed."

Barney laughs. "Yeah, I am! What up!"

Ted wrinkles his nose. "Just don't throw up in the car, okay?"

He leans on the door and the window starts rolling down and all of a sudden it's freezing in the car and Ted is complaining, but Barney leans his head out the window a little bit. The air stings.

He forgets his apartment smells like her.

(Robin tries to call him three times, but never lets it ring more than twice.

She doesn't know what to say.)

Ted stays with Barney at his apartment for a little while. Well, it's more like Barney decides to crack open some more scotch and Ted tells him it's a bad idea so they go halfsies and settle for cheap beer.

"You know what's funny?" he says, taking a long draught.

Ted sets his on the table. "What?"

Barney snickers. "I should have seen it coming."

"What?"

"Hurricane Irene," he says.

And then Ted's talking about Doppler radar and the patterns of storms as they trek through the oceans and something about warm waters. Barney undoes the knot on his tie, leaving it loose around his neck, and wonders when he became the kind of person other people could leave.

He thinks about Jerome.

The room spins and he vomits in the sink and all he can think is

_the ride isn't fun anymore_

And when did that happen?

* * *

Robin leaves him one voicemail where she uses his first name too much and there's a little too much forced laughter.

When he can count the "but, um"s, that's when he knows that she's rehearsed. He hates her when she's like this - Robin practices and practices, reciting lines over and over again, and he knows - or maybe he doesn't, maybe he thinks, maybe he doesn't know her at all - that she hates being watched, hates being  _studied_ in the way that people study insects, that she practices to make sure the lie sounds like the truth.

She laughs on the message, her voice a little too loud for the phone mic, everything crackling sharply.

"So, um, yeah, call me back."

* * *

In the corner of the room, the rose petals begin to wither and he can smell the mix of decay and fragrance already.

He really should throw them out.

* * *

Robin runs into him outside his office on his lunch break. "Hey," she says, "I've been - I haven't seen you in a while, so I thought I'd ... see if you were okay."

He cracks a grin; his cheeks pinch. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She looks down at the sidewalk. Someone jostles her and her shoulder knocks against his. "Barney," she says.

"It didn't mean anything," he says. He can't tell if she looks relieved or not; she's gotten harder to read the longer they've been doing this.

"Let me buy you a coffee," she says.

He sets a hand on her shoulder to prove a point. He hasn't done this very often, but this feels different than them, and all he wants is for them to go back to being who they were. This feels too much like Nora, saying the words and not meaning them, acting everything out. And Nora was - she was perfect in a way that he couldn't imagine living with her, not with her hair never messy, her drawers always organized, her perfect English, perfect pitch, perfect make-up.

She was too put together to handle him, he thinks, or maybe that's just what he told himself. Maybe she was a mess on the inside, but somehow he can't see that either.

He sets a hand on her shoulder and he remembers how hard this was the first few times they did this, when they walked away and pretended that it didn't mean anything, when they decided that it wasn't worth it to destroy other people's lives and their friendships for their own selfish happiness.

He wants to be selfish.

He always does.

She gives him a small smile and shrugs his hand off, and she says, "Just let me buy you a coffee or something."

"As long as it's not Tim Horton's."

She smirks. "You know you love it. That secret 1/4 Canadian part of you  _loves_  some Timmy."

"It didn't mean anything," he says, quieter now, and she falters for just a second.

"I know," she says.

She buys him a coffee and he gets her a donut, and they sit together and they don't talk.

(Kevin calls twice; she picks up once, and he pretends not to eavesdrop. She pretends not to notice.)

* * *

Ted calls and invites him to a documentary screening.

"There'll be chicks there!" he says, in that too-excited-to-be-real-excitement pep talk voice. "Hipster chicks!"

He sends Ted some picture messages of his expression -

"I already did the NYU thing," he says. "So over it."

"You did not know hipsters were a thing," Ted says.

"I knew they were a thing before you knew they were a thing!"

Ted bribes him with alcohol; he accepts.

It's when they stumble drunk into his - Barney's - apartment again at four in the morning, talking about Darth Vader and playing with the Storm Trooper helmet that Ted finds it.

A bottle of Nora's perfume - a sample or something, super small - accidentally knocked behind something else.

Ted shoots him one of his sympathetic looks.

"Stop looking like a sad puppet," Barney says.

"What are you talking about? I look like a person."

"You look like the blue muppet from The Muppets," Barney groans.

* * *

Ted breaks the perfume bottle on his way to the bathroom and everything smells like Nora in his living room. He threw out the roses and now there's Nora's perfume, the smell of it in his sofa, on his TV, the Storm Trooper costume, the counters -

Barney laughs.

* * *

_Stop me if you've heard this one._


	147. the rebound girl

Robin goes home and apologizes to Kevin in her head for the thing she doesn't tell him about and throws up.

Not in that order.

Maybe in that order.

Everything she's wearing still smells like Barney and her mouth feels dry and she spends an hour in the bathroom just dry heaving.

She's never really worn guilt well.

* * *

Robin's late and thinks about telling Lily. (Robin doesn't tell Lily.)

She runs through her life plans in her head and on the tips of her fingers, thinks about all of the things she thought she'd do and the things she did she thought she'd never do (and the two are not interchangeable) and she thinks about the way Kevin's hands span her stomach when they're lying in bed after sex, his fingers broad, the gaps in his fingers showing patches of her skin

and she thinks about Barney's mouth and the line of his jaw, and the way she never seems to think about his fingers.

They never lie like that after sex, her and Barney.

Kevin kisses parts of her body like she's something that should be cherished.

The whole thing makes her nauseous.

(She tries not to think about what else could make her nauseous.)

* * *

She tries to remember her plans for something of this magnitude.

She once had plans, contingency plans for shitstorms like this back when she was in her 20s and stupid and did stupid shit on a fairly regular basis.

And now she's friends with married people and people who want to be married and people who should never be married and then there's her and now, there's this  _thing_ that could be a thing and she feels like that girl in the horror movie who doesn't want to say the name of the monster in case the monster's real and shows up to decapitate her by coming through the mirror.

(Bad horror movie analogy aside, she could use a Bloody Mary right about now.)

She tries to remember her plans and the names of her reckless-20s-friends who would know what to say or what to do in this situation. Lily Aldrin is not one of those people.

* * *

Robin goes through her birth control pack and stares at the empty spaces just to make sure.

She took her pills, every day. Like they told her. Like a responsible adult.

* * *

She throws up after most of her meals and the soup doesn't sit well either.

Two a.m. and she walks into a Duane Reade and buys a pregnancy test and the clerk shoots her a look but hey, buddy, this is New York, this can't be your first... uh, she says, and she's not defensive because she has nothing to worry about and the pimply sixteen-year-old kid is like  _whatever_ and she thinks oh god she has become one of those women.

There's a Kathryn Heigl movie somewhere with this plot on it.

It should probably star Meg Ryan though because Kathryn Heigl doing neurotic is not a thing.

* * *

Robin pees on a stick and it turns a color and she cries in the bathroom and in every other room of the apartment and she can't breathe

and she counts the things she's ready for and the things she isn't ready for and this is definitely on the other column of the list

and she throws up everything she eats because she can't keep it down.

She doesn't go to the bar.

Lily leaves her a handful of worried messages.

"Food poisoning," she says.

Robin cries until she feels empty and she tries to figure out what she can do and Lily would know but she can't tell Lily, she can't, because Lily will be happy or maybe she won't be but Lily will tell people and she isn't ready for people to know.

* * *

Robin prays for the first time in her life and she makes lists

and she Googles and does research

and tries to think of the consequences of either choice.

She isn't ready for this.


	148. symphony of illumination

Robin drinks herself into a stupor.

It's like clueless-freshman-in-college drunk, the-room-is-spinning drunk, can't-remember-my-own-name drunk. But there's something different about this time; the alcohol isn't making her feel any better. If anything, it's making her feel worse.

She still hasn't told anyone, and she knows that it needs to happen, that she needs to come clean about it to her friends, but how can she?

It was never anything she wanted. The Universe just thought it'd step in and provide.

The Universe robbed her of her choice, she can't help but think. It isn't fair, and it isn't right, and isn't that just perfect for Robin Scherbatsky?

* * *

She doesn't know if she wants to tell Barney first or last.

She doesn't know if she wants to tell Barney.

 _Babies are cute when they aren't yours_ , he'd probably say.  _And we'll have Marshall and Lily's kids to mess up._

Whether she knows him well enough to know that's what he'd say, or whether that's what she hopes he'll say, she isn't sure.

* * *

She doesn't consider praying.

* * *

There's a rerun of a hockey game on at four am - two teams she doesn't care about - and she just watches mindlessly; in her hand, the neck of the scotch bottle and she swings it back and forth, listens to the sound of the liquid running up and down the walls softly.

Two of the players start pummeling each other and the stadium organ plays a lilting song.

Robin takes another draught.

* * *

She starts writing names down on the backs of Duane Reade receipts a little after that.

Not even names she'd consider naming people - or dogs - just names that she knows. Her handwriting gets smaller and smaller by the end of the slip and it doesn't matter anyway because the pen she's using is totally wrong and the ink is smudging as she writes

so she can't read anything

and the letters are pushing up against each other, boys names and girls names, and everything just grows more and more illegible.

* * *

She's crying when she calls him.

"What's the matter?" he says, voice crisp and she knows he hasn't been sleeping.

And she says, "I can't tell you."

There's a long pause and she sniffles and thinks about the ridiculousness of it all - her crying like this, her losing her shit over something like this - and he says, "Okay."

He doesn't hang up.

They listen to each other breathe for twenty minutes (and she can hear the sound of pen against paper in the background, so he must be working or doing something), and for a moment, she thinks, maybe this is enough.


	149. tailgate

Kevin leans back against the sofa, beer in his hand, and says,  _that's my girl_ , and they watch her on the screen and count down to new beginnings and fresh starts and pretending that this next year, everything will be different.

Ted nudges Kevin in the shoulder. "What a girl, huh?" he says.

Barney watches the way she enunciates in her special anchorwoman voice, her fingers tight around the mic she's holding. She kisses the cameraman when it's midnight, and then she's wrapping it up, talking over some bland b-roll of all the screaming people in Times Square.

"This is Robin Scherbatsky," she chirps at the camera, "and happy new year!"

The three of them on that sofa, and they toast to the new year and their newly-crowned favorite anchor.


	150. 46 minutes

Halfway between drunk Ted yelling for Better Lily outside the slaughterhouse bar, Barney decides it's about time for a cigarette break. Becoming leader of the group was probably the second-worst idea he's ever had.

Robin sidles up next to him then.

"How's Kevin?"

"Oh, he's over there talking to Ted. Holding his hair while he pukes, probably."

Barney snorts.

"You know, this Marshall and Lily thing – you okay with it?"

"Yeah. Who needs 'em?" He takes a long drag then, shoving his hand in his pocket, and staring at the graffiti tagged on the wall. "The people that love you aren't supposed to leave you, you know?"

"Yeah." She brushes her hand against the back of his shoulder, and he counts her retreating footsteps.


	151. the burning beekeeper

The moment he bursts outside, he realizes just how naked he is. And how much everything hurts. (Bees. Too many bees. And stings in the _worst_ places.)

Lily's mouth hangs open, stammering nonsense syllables. "What did you  _do_?"

He chuckles and wanders over to Robin and Ted. "Ted, stand in front of me." There aren't that many good-looking women here and no one's getting the goods for free. Especially not with what happened tonight. (She means too much to him.)

"So, how'd it go?" Robin asks, sipping her wine. "Penis intact?"

"Lily  _told you_?"

"Of course Lily told me."

Ted frowns, eyebrows furrowed. "Uh... what does she mean ' _penis intact_ '?"

"It's a long story," Barney says, doing up his belt.

"Well, I'm glad you didn't lose your soul," Robin says, draining the rest of her wine.

Barney arches an eyebrow. "Oh,  _are you_?"

"Shut up, or I'll grab the nearest cheese knife."


	152. drunk train

The break-up happens like this: he has his hands folded in his lap and he can't look her in the eye and somewhere, Robin is reminded of being told that becoming emotionally involved always means putting a gun in someone else's hands and hoping it doesn't go off.

And the crazy part of it is that somewhere, she thinks she knew. As much as Kevin was perfect, and as much as he loves her for all her weird messed-up parts, this is a hurdle that it's hard to get over. People imagine their futures with kids in them, or with dogs, or with picket fences and not doing yard work and hating the neighbors and tacky yard sales.

It took her weeks to get to a point where she could tell him that she loved him because everything about this relationship felt different than everything that came before. It was too easy – he loved her, and when he said that, he meant it. He loved her, and he loved the things that she did, and he forgave her for things, and when they fought, they made up pretty quickly. This was what Marshall and Lily maybe feel like. It was the most stable relationship she's ever had – no break ups and make ups, no other girlfriend, no real complications – and it all seemed to click.

It's like suddenly she forgot that people invested in happy endings are always working for them (like Ted). Or people who are convinced they have no happy endings just work for a close-enough one (like Barney). And somewhere between the two, there's her and whatever she expects. And she's not sure what that is yet, but right now, it's hard to look anywhere but this mess. Like a bomb dropping on a house and there's splintered wood everywhere.

She goes to the roof for a cigarette – why not? Tonight's the night to repeat mistakes, right? – and the sky is clear and if she were the kind of person to make wishes (she isn't), it'd maybe be a good night for that too.


	153. no pressure

Ted's trying to keep a neutral face the whole time Barney is telling him the whole story, but it's hard. It's really hard. All his feelings for Robin aside, he does love Barney, and the whole saga of the two of them is something that he's never really looked at this way. Not directly in the face.

And the longer that he stands here and listens to them, the more he's convinced that Barney is so in love with her and doesn't know how to deal with it. And here he is, acting like an adult for a change, saying that it's fine if Ted dates Robin because as long as Robin's happy, and if Ted dates Robin, it's fine because bros before hoes, and Ted has seen mature Barney before, sure, maybe once or twice, but nothing like this.

"Ted," Barney says, sinking down on the sofa with a sigh, "If you date Robin, we're still going to be friends. I'm your wingman."

Ted smiles. "Yeah, but – "

"But nothing. You and Robin are one thing, and me and Robin are finished. And that's it."

Ted touches a hand to his shoulder. "I can't believe how grown up you're being about this."

"Yeah, well, we all have to grow up sometime, right?" Barney stands then, smoothing out his blazer. "Now, let's watch that sex tape!"


	154. karma

Their coffee date is so... normal. Everything about being with Quinn feels normal. Like they've been doing this for weeks, and his heart still races when he sees her and they've avoided the rut but they're here now.

No real fighting, no judging – nothing but occasional quips here and there.

And he doesn't know what's the matter with him, because everything else was always a fight. Shannon was a fight that he didn't see coming; Robin was a fight that he wasn't prepared for; Nora, a fight that he surrendered – everything has always been about proving himself, and he has never wanted to be the person that needed to do that.

And here he is again – round three – with another gorgeous girl who knows him for what he is and treats him like how he deserves to be treated, but still thinks that maybe he could be loved.

And maybe that's enough. Maybe it's better now that he's getting tired of finding new women in Manhattan to sleep with (and the secret here – how long has it been since his last one night stand? Longer than he tells the group) and that he loves to go home and slip out of his suit and just have some scotch and go to sleep.

He's tired, and maybe he's ready now – not ready to commit, not ready to say I do or anything, but ready now to grow up. (Maybe it was the fate he was avoiding this whole time.)

Late that night, he calls Robin and says, "It's weird, right, that we're adults now?"

She sighs. "Had to happen sometime."


	155. the broath

He tells Ted that maybe he's considering marrying her, and Ted spits his soup out all over the table. "Barney, you can't be serious."

"Ted, you talk about the one all the time. Usually when you first meet a girl, she's the one. At least Quinn and I have had sex!" A long pause: "Mind-blow-"

"Mindblowing sex, I got it." Ted wipes up the mess on the table with a few spare napkins, and pushes his bowl aside. "It's just – the first time that you talk about marriage, I thought – well, I didn't think it was going to be with a stripper."

Barney exhales, draining the rest of his glass of water. "I love her, Ted," he says, flagging for the check.

"As long as you're sure," Ted says, and Barney doesn't meet his gaze.


	156. trilogy time

He says  _you're the person I want to spend the rest of my life with_ and nothing seems incredible about it. The world doesn't stop turning, the shards of ceramic on the floor are still there (and still sharp), and she's still in his kitchen.

He has never wanted to be a part of a pair before – it's just not his style – but things with Quinn feel different. Different than Robin, even. It's just that she knows how he thinks and she thinks the same way and she understands those parts of him, and he doesn't want to lie to her.

It's not about becoming a better person for her; it's about the fact that they're on the same level. And that feels... comfortable.


	157. now we're even

He calls her again a few hours later, asks if she's doing okay, if it was terrifying to pilot the helicopter. It's all the basic questions – things she'd expect from Marshall and Lily. Things between them haven't exactly felt settled since the whole Kevin and Nora debacle, since her engagement fell apart, since he found Quinn.

She still hasn't really talked about it – or thought about it, to be honest – because it's his life and she's since stopped trying to think that she could – or should – have any say over what he does in his own life.

"At least you have a cool story now," he says, and she laughs. The silences on the line are longer than they used to be. "But I'm really glad that you're all right."

She bites her lip. "Thanks, Barney. Good night."


	158. good crazy

Quinn tells him  _it isn't your place, and you should stop. i like my job_. And yeah, maybe that's true. But this is what no one warned him about – that monogamy is as much about trust and about letting someone else take control, and trusting them to do the right thing.

(And the thing he doesn't tell anyone: trust is too hard. It's too hard to give someone else the tools for your own destruction and trust that they won't hurt you or kill you.)

He tells Quinn that he loves her and it isn't enough to get her to stop stripping. He tells her that they should move in together and it isn't enough to get her to stop stripping.

He wants them to work out, wants a future with her, but it's those moments when she tells him that she doesn't want to stop working at the Lusty Leopard that he starts to doubt. He thought faith was supposed to work differently than this.


	159. the magician's code pt 1

Drunk Marshall gives him a hard shove when they're on the bus to Buffalo. "You need to stop talking about Quinn," he says. "Lily is having  _a baby_  and you keep talking about Quinn!"

"I really messed things up," he says.

"Yeah, but if you mess things up, you just have to try to make it right again. And – by the way – the time to talk about this would not be when Lily's in labor and we're on the road to Buffalo."

Barney sniffs. "You think I can fix it?"

"Look," Marshall says, tapping his shoulder. "Lily and I have had a lot of fights, and if you love each other, you make it right. That's what happens. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Now can we just  _stop talking_ about your girlfriend and start talking about my baby?"

"Yeah," he says. "Sorry."


	160. the magician's code pt 2

Robin never figured that they would be the kind to settle down – her and Barney. And the fact that he found someone else to settle down with is – she can't really process it at all.

They sit down and they have the required conversation – she's happy for him, and there's nothing between them really anymore, and she's glad he found someone he wants to spend the rest of his life with, and no, there are no lingering feelings – and it feels a bit like going through the motions. She's not even sure how she really feels.

She likes Quinn okay – it's not like she hates her or anything – and she and Barney have been good at slipping back into friendship, but they haven't quite gotten back into the rhythm they had before they started complicating everything with feelings and sex.

That night, she buys him a celebratory drink at MacClaren's. "I'm glad it worked out for you," she says, handing him his drink.

He smiles. "Thanks, Scherbatsky. Bros?"

They clink their tumblers together. "Bros."


	161. farhampton

This is the story of the box:

Boxes are for the in-between, for moving, for storage, for things you're unsure of keeping or throwing away, for things you don't know if you've outgrown yet, for things you're too scared to lose, for things you're too scared to throw out in case you need them in the distant future or not-distant future, in case it turns out to be the thing that will save your life.

Boxes keep what you can't keep. It's one box. Robin Scherbatsky manages to fit inside a single box, and that kind of seems like a lie in itself.

The box: almost every photo of the two of them that he has, several silk ties she'd gotten him, other insignificant items, a near-empty bottle of scotch, a near-empty thing of cigars, a hockey jersey. Somehow these things spell Robin. But they don't really. That's the truth of it: nothing could contain what they were, or what they were pretending to be, or what they are now. They're friends, sure. There's pictures of them at a hockey game. And there's the remnant of a shirt that she ruined during one of their more enthusiastic tearing-off-each-other's-clothes fucks that he somehow never remembered keeping, but doesn't want to throw out.

This is how Loretta collects a house full of memories she can't stand to look at in Staten Island.

This is how you start collecting your own demons. You can't run away from boxes, after all. Not when they belong to you. And this?

Well, even if it doesn't belong to him, who else is going to claim it? It isn't as if he can leave Robin alone in a storage locker. Doesn't seem right.

* * *

Over a beer, she asks him the most direct way she knows how: by not asking. She runs her thumb along the edge of the tumbler and slides the keys toward him.

"Why did you even give me these?"

He shrugs, his smile tucked low in the corner of his mouth. It's the kind of smile she never remembers seeing, but the kind she knows she's seen a thousand times at least. The kind of smile that isn't really a smile at all.

"Thought you should know."

"Well," she says, swirling the scotch in her glass, the ice clinking, "Thanks."

"I couldn't – I would never erase you, you know."

"Sure."

It's really just a question of space.


	162. the pre-nup

Barney knows how the saying goes: fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on – well, everybody knows.

Usually he's the one doing the fooling. Usually. With Quinn, it's more of a toss-up. (Oh, he remembers: spending his nights at the Lusty Leopard, handing her most of his petty cash; with a name like Karma, he should have known.)

So the pre-nup isn't really a surprise. She plays his game. He should have known.

* * *

His list of demands isn't really his list of demands.

She has to keep her body in shape; she has to make herself available for his every sexual demand; she has to forgive him his sins and let him be whoever he has made himself out to be. The truth: sometimes he sees Shannon in her face and doesn't know how to talk to her; sometimes he turns over in his sleep in the middle of the night and her hair on the pillow will remind him that this isn't another one night stand.

It's easier to walk away if it means that he isn't the one being left.

The pre-nup can't protect against that, but he wants it to. (It's another test: if he can make her walk away, then it's still his choice. And that's important. That it's his  _choice to be left because he doesn't want her, doesn't need her, and not that she left him because she wanted to leave him.)_

Quinn has her hands laid flat on the stack of legal papers, her engagement ring still a bit ill-fitting on her finger, the stone facing the side.

Turns out, it's a question of trust. Does he trust her? No. Does she trust him? No. (The other questions, of course, that no one else asks:

Does he trust himself?

No.)

* * *

Robin buys him a drink after the break-up. He doesn't tell her everything. It's enough to roll the sleeves of his shirt up to the elbow and point out the detail on his cuff links and to say that she was just another extended one-night stand, that the engagement was a ploy.

At three a.m., when Carl does last call, he stares down into his last tumbler of scotch for the evening, and it spills out on the bar counter. _She didn't trust me._

Robin pats his wrist, making a sympathetic noise, and he has to laugh.

"You don't trust me," he says.

"No," she says.

"Did you before?"

She presses her lips together, giving a small shrug. "I don't know."

"Yeah," he says, taking the rest of the liquor down in a single shot, "Me either."

* * *

Later: he'll be sitting in the bar and she's on the stool next to him, her shoulder knocking lightly against his.

"I don't trust you," she says, "Just so you know."

"I know."

"But I'm here."

The corner of his mouth tics. "Yeah," he says, taking another sip of his drink, biting against the edge of the glass. "You are."

(That was always the real question.)


	163. nannies

In case you missed it, they're excellent at this dance. Know the steps in and out, breathe its rhythm, add adaptations and variations but always the same. Always the same.

He slides into the booth and there's a print of a heel along the apple of his cheek. She traces it with her finger like marking evidence. Here, he winces. There, he doesn't. And there, brown compared to the yellow-purple over there.

Ted goes to ask Carl for ice and her finger lifts from the surface of his cheek to hover.

 _You're getting over Quinn_ , she'd said, _you can't just jump back in._

What she didn't mean, and what he meant: _I'm still getting over you. I can't just jump back in._

Her throat bobs with the silence and the tension and he exhales, sagging back against the booth. Ted returns, ice in a stein, and trumpets his own fanfare for being the hero.

Ted returns, and the measure resets.

Ted returns.


	164. who wants to be a godparent?

"We talked about it once."

She turns and peers into her drink. "What, you and Quinn?"

He shrugs, and the crease in his suit sharpens. "Yeah. Not seriously or anything - god, could you imagine?"

She shakes her head. "No," she says. "I can't."

There are some people in this world she thinks maybe aren't fit to be parents. Barney's certainly one of them. He's still a kid himself - so fascinated with going through and playing with his toys and fiddling with his mind games. No matter how many times he shows up after with a gift to say he's sorry, she knows - well, part of her knows, anyway - that he never really means it. No one means it until they commit to change.

"You a cynic, Scherbatsky?"

She shrugs it off. "You're telling me you could see yourself with a kid?"

He purses his lips. "Not right now. They're weird, but... they're weird in a good way sometimes. _Sometimes_."

"Nah, I don't think they're for you."

"Or me for them?" He turns to look at her and she ducks his gaze. It's a lack of faith with her. Always.

(The day Marshall and Lily come to tell them the news, he lifts his head, chin jutting forward to meet her eyes as always. As usual. She knows that look.

 _Challenge accepted_.)


	165. the autumn of break-ups

This is the beat after the fall. This is where he realizes, or she realizes, or they both realize – _hello!_ \- they were only ever friends, and they were only ever good friends and whatever else happened in the in between was just transference. They don't know how to do this, how to be this kind of close friend, so they misread it. They misread everything.

This is not the first time this happens. (This is not the last.)

He walks into that woman's apartment, and he knows that a dog is a poor replacement for a Scherbatsky and he thinks _wow, he is just so lucky right now_ , another night with a meaningless fuck and another night in someone else's bed, leaving before the sheets are cold to an empty apartment.

He is so lucky.


	166. splitzville

There's a moment in the middle of his speech when she takes in a breath and doesn't let it out. Honestly, she isn't sure why. The whole speech is – it's kind of crazy, right? Because here he is, and here she is, and here _they are_ , and none of this seems to be real. It isn't something that she'd think that she'd enjoy – and she doesn't, she doesn't – because this isn't the kind of person that she knows he is. In private, maybe, but like this? Public declarations in a restaurant is a Ted thing.

But she still can't let go of the breath she's holding.

Like maybe that'll be the thing to blow over this house of cards he keeps building. Like maybe it'll be the thing to knock him over and make the whole thing – _them_ – break apart into a million pieces. Beyond fixing.


	167. the stamp tramp

This is where you remember that there are steps to this dance. This is where you remember to breathe, that breathing is two counts, that breathing is in and out; this is where you remember that you've forgotten the rhythm to this. To how the both of you move, to how the both of you operate.

She kisses back (of course she kisses back) but we're not supposed to pay attention to that. She says _I have changed, I am changing, I will change –_ a lesson in tenses, but always the same. Still moving away from you, still rotating circles, still following her orbit.

And you pretend this is new. You pretend this is going to lead to new places. That you will find someone who will wash the taste of her out of your mouth, the smell of her off of your skin, the memory of her -

No, that's impossible. Nothing can touch memory. After all, it isn't real.

So you take a breath. You remember. The steps, the steps! – how could you forget? Maybe it was a moment of weakness, of forgetting, but remember this too: you're a weak creature, and you always will be.


	168. twelve horny women

He's always made it easier for you. So here – (this is where you admit that you delighted in it, at least sometimes; the attention, the thought, the reminder that you were still trapped in whatever you were trapped in, that maybe you loved it as much as you hated it, that maybe you entertained the maybe longer than you should have) – is the gap of things unsaid, of things undone, of all the times you kissed each other and pretended it didn't happen (answer: a lot), the times you didn't kiss each other but wanted to (a lot), the times when you didn't kiss each other (a lot at the beginning, not so much now).

He takes a deep breath and doesn't say _we should just be friends_ because that's always been you and your words, you and your mouth. He says _I can do friends because I can't do anything else_ and you don't say anything because for once, your words aren't coming quick to the tongue like they usually do.

But silence has always been par for the course for the both of you. There's so much neither of you are willing to say, or admit. There's so much.

He walks to the bar and says _things will go back to normal_ and you don't even hesitate before you think it – _what's normal?_ There has been no normal for you both; there's been ups and downs, and reality and pretending, and all the times when you both decide that it isn't worth it, and all the slivers of time when you decided that it was. What's worth? What's normal?

He walks to the bar and comes back with drinks, and his grin is wide, and he says _i bet that redhead at the bar has fantastic boobs_ , and you laugh, and part of you winds down; part of you is dimming; part of you is exhaling and thinking _oh_.

What's that they say about absence? Have you forgotten?


	169. lobster crawl

It's just like Shelter Island. Standing there by the door and seeing him there, with someone else, with this disappointment that settles low in her stomach. It's a low punch to the gut and a reminder – this wasn't about timing. This was never about timing.

This has only ever been about the both of them, and how they've never wanted the same thing, no matter what they tried to convince themselves. As if she could ever look at him and see anyone else beyond these doorjamb moments, when she's leaning there (clothed, less clothed) while he's leaning on the opposite side (clothed, less clothed) and there's a woman behind, and the insistent reminder that this is how things will go. This is how things will always be.

She should have known better, but that's the rule with them, isn't it? No matter how many times she tries to tell herself – this is the moral, this is the lesson, learn it and move on – there will always be more doorjamb moments, more times when she looks at herself and sees someone who refuses to learn and change, more times when she thinks he's the most deplorable person she knows.

And is any of that true? And, if not, then, what else is there?

She walks down the hall and she counts her footsteps, and she tries to forget the familiarity of the lesson. (Stop me if you've heard this one before.)


	170. the over-correction

She thinks about telling him. She doesn't think about telling him, but Lily suggests it. (The outcome: she never tells him.)

After all, how could she? She was supposed to be moving on, she was supposed to be picking up whatever was left of her life (abysmal career prospects, being cruel to Patrice for no other reason than her life sucks, not singing, not making music, not writing, not dating – just perennially stuck, as always). And now she's envious of a woman she despises. This is a good turn. This is good. After all, she's only in her mid-thirties. She still has time to grow, right?

But how could she say anything? (Taking them back and back and back - ) When she was the person that walked away the first time. Maybe it's because Patrice doesn't deserve him. Deserves better than a man that is the same as her, than a man who convinces himself that change is just around the corner and turns, and turns, and turns and finds the same old body standing in the same spot.

Maybe that is the truth. Patrice deserves better, and she deserves him (and nothing greater, nothing more).


	171. the final page (pt. 1)

This is how self-awareness happens: he wakes up and knows the way he is and says it aloud. Says it to everyone. To Patrice, to Ted. To the guy that works the deli counter on his block. Even to the night shift doorman who definitely thinks he's a creep.

He stops by Tiffany's. (Patrice doesn't have a favorite jewelry store, but come on. It's Tiffany's. There's songs about it and everything. Well, sort of.)

It weighs his pocket down. It weighs him down. A rock, for sure, but an anchor, too – part of him still doesn't get why Ted's chased this for so long, why anyone would chase being anchored, stopping all motion to stay still. Then again, he's never understood being still. Not when there are so many things in the world to try and to see and to experience.

This is how self-awareness happens: he'll unmake himself, and hope to find something better in its stead.

(He tells Ted he feels empty. The truth is he has gotten to know as much of New York as anyone could know, and now he needs to chase another mistress.)


	172. the final page (pt. 2)

The stone is heavy on her finger. Heavier than she thinks. Heavier than she thought it'd be. The snow comes down in flurries now, the kind of snow she used to love in Canada, the ones where it's just a touch of cold against the crown of your head and nothing more. Nothing to shovel, nothing to salt, no chance of slipping on a walk back home, especially if drunk. (Fact: that never happened in Canada? It was always heavy snow, but run with the imagery here.)

The fabric of his coat is rough against her skin. The places where it meets anyway – the underside of her wrist, the tips of her fingers – and she's reminded that this is new. This is them coming together after a long break. This is permanent. This is lasting. This is _permanent_.

It's hard to still the familiar panic. What if this is the wrong decision? What if this was the wrong choice? Her history of decisions this year hasn't been particularly spectacular – Nick, the public access tv cooking host who couldn't come up with a catchphrase? - hell, let's be real, hasn't been great for the past few years, and now here she is again, making a big decision because of a grand gesture. Part of her thinks that she fucking hates grand gestures. Can't stand the way they're staged, can't stand the way everything has to play out just so, hates the scheduling and the planning, and the way that if something is grand, it makes the resulting decision that much heavier. That much more important.

If they had just sat down in the park...

If they had just sat down in the bar and gotten drunk together, and he'd looked over at her with the kind of drunken scotch clarity that she's used to, that she knows, then it would have been something different. If he'd asked her to marry him then, with that scotch clarity in his eyes? And the quiet tremor and hum in his voice that reminds her that they're both running scared? That neither of them know what the fuck they're doing? Yeah, what would she have done then? What would she have done?

The point is... she doesn't know. The point is she doesn't need to know. But the point here is that she would have at least known _him_. But this Barney? This Barney-transformed-by-Ted-Barney who is apparently tired of their games is looking at her out of the corner of his eye and kissing her forehead and brushing his hands across her waist, and he's so _quiet_ , he's so quiet, and it's snowing and she's standing underneath mistletoe and yeah, there were rose petals everywhere and so what if she feels like this is a memory she's lived before? So what?

Isn't this supposed to be what women wait for? Isn't this supposed to be what happens when you get proposed to? You're supposed to feel like a Disney princess, right, and not like you're freezing your ass off on top of the place where you work – _oh, right, Robin, you work here –_ where maybe a few people who know you have seen you and have heard parts of your fight and, yeah, maybe now's not the best time to think about work.

But the ring, the rock, the ring – it's a gold band and a large diamond (he can afford it; you both know this) and it's supposed to be a sign. What is it that they said, what is it that they make you read at wedding ceremonies – a sign of love and affection? And she looks at it and it's so new and it shines, and if she keeps looking at it, wow, it is really shiny – like the kind of shiny that babies go for – and the light keeps dancing across the face of it and she can't stop looking at it, can't stop wiggling her finger to test how heavy her hand is now.

This is different. This is something she didn't expect, and Ted's left with the limo now so here she is on a rooftop with a new man that she doesn't recognize, on the roof of her office building with probably no available cabs on the street because, well, what are the odds on a night like this? There's plenty of other people in the world. Getting engaged, getting cabs.

"What's the matter?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says, and her voice is real quiet, too, and look at that, the both of them, becoming these quiet, quiet, soft people. "Nothing's the matter."

"I wanted it to be perfect," he says, and yeah, she knows. People plan for perfect engagements, people plan for perfect weddings, people plan for perfect, but she just never thought that the two of them – _the two of them_ – and god, what can she say to that?

"It's cold," she says, and he kisses the apple of her cheek.

He says, "But you like it, right?" And she finds herself nodding, feels the movement more than anything else, and the ring catches the light and they're still standing under the mistletoe so she kisses him because she needs something she remembers. Needs the scrape of his teeth against her lip, against her skin, needs the heat of everything they've ever done.

But it's a close-mouthed kiss. No heat. Just … whatever this is now.

"Should we clean this up?" she asks. The rose petals are everywhere, the mistletoe is hanging, and it's snowing, but it's still office property. It's still someone's job to keep the roof free and clear in case... in case they have to evacuate or helivac or something, right? Where is the weather and traffic chopper going to park?

He shakes his head with a crooked grin. "I got a guy."

That's the thing about grand gestures: they always leave a mess.


	173. band or dj?

It's late when she comes back to his apartment, another overnight bag in tow. "You really have to stop doing that," she grouses as she readies for bed. She's still not used to his bathroom – read: hates – it's too much chrome and glass for her taste, and she feels like there's mirrors everywhere.

"What?" he asks.

Her nose wrinkles. "All that 'baby' stuff," she says. "I don't know. We were never like that before..."

He pushes the corner of the comforter away from his side of the bed and creeps into it. "All right, all right. I've never been engaged before, all right, I'm still trying to get the hang of it."

Her laugh is short, surprising even her. "I've never been engaged either, you know. It's new for me, too."

"Yeah, but..." he says, waving his hand.

"What?"

He brushes a hand through his hair, rumpling it up in the center. Makes him look old somehow, drawing out the dark circles underneath his eyes. "This is all new to me. Being in this kind of a..." – here, he winces – "relationship."

"There was Quinn. There was Nora," she says, ticking it off on her fingers.

"There was you."

"See? You're not that new."

She sits on the opposite edge of the bed, switches the lamp on his nightstand on. He takes her left hand, scratches his palm across the stone of her ring.

"I don't know what I'm doing," he says, and she switches off the light with her free hand. In the dark, they sigh together and she thinks _yes_ , thinks _i understand_.

"I don't either."

"Is that why you're having Ted plan our wedding?" He laughs, a rough sound.

"You know how women like that sort of thing."


	174. ring up!

She's playing with the ring when he returns to the table with their scotches. (That's weird, isn't it? How she's suddenly stopped being a singular and now is only part of a plural? People reference them together now, like they're one of those weird utensil sets from Crate & Barrel or something.)

"What's up?" he asks, and the glow around him dims a little.

It's all still so new – this idea of their being a them, of them being a unit that people talk about, of having mutual possession over things. She's still inclined to think of things as hers, and then his. But she got the ring resized, so now it fits; now there's no danger in it falling off her finger.

He reaches for her hand. "You all right?"

She takes a sip of her scotch, lets it sit on the tongue and burn a little. "Fine," she says. "Fine."


	175. ps i love you

"So where do you keep all those records anyway?"

She's only through her second cup of coffee and nothing is making sense. "What records?"

"You know, the certified maple-glazed -"

"First of all, maple-glazed is an adjective describing a donut. And _Let's Go to the Mall_ went _double_ maple, thank you."

He snorts. "Oh, sure, sure. So where do you keep those certified double maple records anyway? We could hang them up."

"Shut up."

"No, really. You could autograph them, Robin Sparkles – oh, I'm sorry, Robin Daggers, and then you could put them up and when we have Marshall and Lily over, we'll just put your music on in the background."

She throws a pillow at him.


	176. bad crazy

He watches her with Marvin for a few minutes. It isn't a conversation they'd ever sit down and have, or even a possibility they'd entertain, but there's something in the nervous and weirdly open joy on her face when she's holding him for the first time. Accomplishment, too, like she's that robot machine from the Pixar movie that learned how to feel. (He has to stop spending time with Marshall and Lily.)

But she looks over at him, Marvin's legs kicking lightly at her hip, and she smiles. "Look!" she mouths, and he grins, tipping the neck of his beer in her direction.

"Kid looks like he's enjoying the ride."

Marvin coos then, knocking a tiny fist against Robin's shoulder.

It isn't often that he ever thinks he understands why Marshall, Lily, and Ted think and act the way that they do, but he figures this might be one of the times where he does.


	177. the ashtray

"Your stories aren't all you have, you know."

He looks down at the table, presses his thumb to the neck of the beer bottle. "It's not about that. It's about me. You know, I'm … Barney Stinson."

"Yeah," she says. "You are."

His mouth twists, a shadow of a wry smile. "I'm the one with catchphrases. Suit up! It's going to be legendary!"

She adjusts the knot of his tie. "You think any of us know who we really are?"

"Yeah," Ted says. "Part of me thinks that this woman that I'm waiting for... she's never going to show up, and I'll just be waiting here forever. I'm tired of waiting."

"Yeah, but architecture's something," Barney says.

"Not a whole life, though."

Barney hums.


	178. weekend at barney's

It isn't just about the misdirection, or the sleight-of-hand or the lying. Part of her wants to know when this became par for the course for the two of them. Of course they both lie, to themselves and to other people, but this is different now. They're supposed to be different. More grown up. And what does it say about her now that this is becoming a reasonable explanation? What does this say about her now that she nods and says yes and just lets it happen?

He takes her hand and they start walking back down the street. "I just don't want to become one of those people," she says.

"What people?"

"You know, where they do this thing and they pretend that it's okay right before everything ends up falling apart. I don't want to become the married people that are so in denial about what their problems are but don't want to get a divorce that they just stay together and are unhappy." He stills, and she sighs. "We did that once, already, remember?"

"It's not going to be like that this time."

"How do you know? How can you be sure? You just said... everything that you just said... how can anything be built on a lie and still stand, Barney? You really think that this is how we work? That this only works if we lie to each other?"

"It's not about lying!"

She snorts.

"It's not. It's – look, I'm never going to choose to lie to you, not... not really. But you and I – we're different – we don't – we've never been able to sit down across the table from each other and say how we feel all the time, and that's – that's just us."

The fabric flowers brush against her thigh. "Yeah, but when does that stop being a reason and start becoming an excuse?"

He shrugs. "We just have to figure it out when we get there."

"When we get there," she repeats.

He pulls a silk scarf from his sleeve, wraps it around her shoulders. "Yeah, Scherbatsky. When we get there."


	179. the fortress

"Just because I accept all the creepy sociopathic parts of you doesn't mean that we're not going to make changes," she says over dinner that night. "Yeah, like most of this has got to go."

He sputters. "Go? But – but I thought this was going to be _our_ fortress of solitude!"

"You have to get rid of the sprinklers, and the weird green screens, and we're going to get you new furniture."

"My taste is fine."

"Your taste is Gordon Gecko from the first Wall Street movie."

He grins. "Yeah, see, you agree, it's fine!"

"It kind of sucks. Come on, we'll go to IKEA, and you can get some Swedish meatballs or something."

He arches a brow. "That's a terrible bribe. Come on, you got to come up with something better than that."

She clicks her tongue. "How about..." she starts, voice low and sultry. "We go to IKEA and I don't punch you."

He rolls his eyes, but when she raises her fist, he winces. "All right, all right!"


	180. the time travelers

She's leafing through another page of Ted's caterers binder – and who knew there were so many? Who knew Ted had a collection? (She should have known.) - when Barney sighs and says, "Just open it to a random page, and that's the caterer we'll use."

"That's not how I want to cater my wedding."

"I thought you didn't care."

"Well," she says, "I do. I mean, everyone loves food. And I want good steak at the wedding."

"Steak," he repeats.

"Steak and scotch."

"And how does Ted have those caterers organized?"

She flips through another page. "Uh, alphabetically and by Yelp review rating."


	181. romeward bound

Of course you've thought about it. Of course you've had concerns. After all, everyone has a reputation and yours is well-known by now. You're a running joke, a gag for the laugh track. Ted stands there, stalwart and trustworthy like every other time, like every other hero in a romantic comedy, and says _she isn't as okay with it as you think_. Ted says _you should be better_. Ted says.

And how can you deny that? Ted is Ted, has always been Ted, will always the heroine in his own little romantic comedy, and you've never been one to shy away from being the villain. The Darth Vaders of the world, that's where you've thrown your lot so what else is there? What else can there be? You love this girl, and you hope that's enough, and part of you knows that it won't be.

You want to change, have always wanted to change, but sometimes want can't account for all of the things you don't think you have control over. There are other girls. There will always be other girls. And it isn't what everyone else thinks. It isn't that you're unhappy or that you're unsettled or that you want the entire buffet line – part of you lives in that moment of absence, when your mom slips out the door while you aren't looking or when Shannon looks down her nose and sees that you aren't a man, and Robin, sure, when Robin looked at you and gets that tired expression and thinks maybe it isn't worth it to fight for something that's so hard. Maybe it isn't worth it to fight for someone like you who doesn't even want to fight.

It's none of Ted's business. It's none of Ted's business, and you can repeat that until you're blue in the face, but you already know the problem.

The problem is part of you believes Ted. More than part of you. And the other parts, they're just yelling even louder to make up the difference.


	182. bro mitzvah

Part of her can't help wondering if there's something wrong with her for planning something like this. For knowing that maybe part of him could enjoy making an evening of having the worst bachelor party ever. Of celebrating the story in his own misery.

Part of her wants to ask. _You don't resent me for doing this to you, do you?_ More than part of her wants to know the answer that sits on the tip of his tongue.

But he smiles, and she smiles, and they pour drinks and they toast. And the real answer, of course? They've done much worse.


	183. something old

You've always had doubts, and isn't that the truth? You aren't a signs girl. You were never a signs girl. None of it was for you – fate, destiny, the laws of the universe – there was only ever just whatever happened, and whatever you had to deal with. And now there is this. There is the cold sheets of rain that are sluicing across your face, and there's the warmth of Ted's hand underneath yours, and isn't that funny, the carousel just behind you, isn't that funny, the carousel, isn't that funny the way you keep circling around this point?

Ted, and Barney, and you, and you figure maybe now's a good time to get off the ride. But you were never the kind of girl to learn a lesson easy. No, you have to be the girl that eats the whole cloud of cotton candy and gets on the ride again and again until you throw up. Until something punches you so hard in the gut that you learn never to chase that kind of sweet dizziness again. Is that what this feels like? Have you figured that out yet?

Or is it, instead, just the reminder that you and Barney are the same? Have always been the same? Will always be chasing something else, something better, different storms, the same storms, until both of you forget which direction is north? Neither of you have had a compass; instead, you've found each other. And now, and now, it's raining and you can't find your grandmother's locket buried underneath the park, and the carousel is right behind you, and isn't that funny? Isn't that funny? You're talking about signs and Ted's trying to talk you out of it, and when did you switch positions, when did you decide that he was going to fight for your love and you were going to run away from it? Hasn't that happened before? You forget. Or, maybe you choose not to remember. When does it start being your fault, or is Robin Scherbatsky simply faultless at all times? (That's a joke, too, isn't it? Just ask your father.)

He is a man built of fault, and you never found fault easy to accept. Not when it so closely mirrors your own. After all, he made a grand gesture but it was through lying and manipulation (strike one), and he made a grand gesture but he hasn't stopped looking at any of the busty women that all five boroughs have to offer (strike two), and he's willing to sacrifice and give up those certain luxuries, but only if they're on his conditional terms (strike three). But you're still here. He's still here. You've both walked away once (strike four?), twice (strike five?), however many times, and you still keep coming back. So that has to mean something, right?

This wedding – this is the right decision. That's what you told yourself once when you first heard those doubts beating loud in your chest. And you know, the heart is just an organ. You know, the heart doesn't speak. People keep anthropomorphizing it like it is something that can offer any greater wisdom, anything other than the continuous pounding rhythm of life – in and out, in and out, expand and contract.

He is spending time with your father and he is searching for a father and so are you (can you hear the laughter, can you see the cracks in the mirror for what they are, finally? Are you learning? And now? How about now?), and you wonder if he's another version of the same man. If he's going to turn out to be just as emotionally unavailable, if he's ever going to wake up and discover that all he wanted was a fortress of solitude in his own right.

But none of this is right. You're another version of your father, too, and Barney's another version of you, and it's a question of casting. Like catching a Broadway show in the middle of the week, with the tiny slips of paper caught in the playbills that say _tonight the role of robin scherbatsky will be played by barney stinson_ , or maybe the other way, _tonight the role of robin scherbatsky's father will be played by barney stinson_ , and who knows? Who cares? How long have you been losing track?

Ted's hand is warm underneath yours, and the rain is coming down cold and wet, and you think _what if, what if_.

And that's the problem, isn't it? You have never wanted Ted, have never thought of him in that particular way in years, but in him, there is a glimmer of something else. In him, there is _not this_. In him, there is escape.

(Barney hides, but you've always been a runner.)


	184. something new

They sit on the park bench for the rest of the night, just watching the sky over Manhattan change colors. He fishes out a pack of cigarettes from his inside jacket pocket and hands her one. "You ready for this?" he asks.

The flick of his lighter is quiet, and she takes a deep drawl off of hers.

"I don't know," she answers. "What's to be ready for?"

"You and me," he says, "We haven't exactly been good at this before."

"It'll be different this time," she says, hoping she sounds as confident as she doesn't feel.

"You think so?"

She runs a hand through her hair. "Yeah," she says. He turns to look at her, the corners of his mouth ticking with a small smile. "And, hey, if not, there's always divorce."

He grins. "My lawyers would _crush_ your lawyers."


	185. the locket

This must be what faith feels like.

Sitting in the back of the limo with her, holding her hand, and promising some kind of forever. Not the capital F kind, not the kind that Ted swears by every second of his life, but a lesser kind. One that's fit for the two of you. 

Her fingers fit in yours, and her smile tucks around the last half of your sentence, and you think this must be legendary. This must be something stories are written about. Because it's not supposed to feel this way for everyone. This is something different than what Ted and Marshall and Lily know. This is the two of you.

This is jumping from one building to another and holding your breath. This is the moment when you learn that falling's what you've been doing your whole life.

So what do you have to wait for? The ground's always there underneath you, isn't it?


	186. coming back

It's not that you don't trust him. (But, of course, you don't; not where it counts.) It's that you know how this ends. You've come to the same mark a thousand times before.

You put yourself out there, get yourself involved, and wait for someone who wants something better. Someone who leaves. (And who's to say he wouldn't? You tried to once, and is he a better person than to avoid hanging that over your head? Is he a better person than that kind of petty revenge? You already know the answer; you were both too alike for your own good.)

So, yeah, now things are good. Now the waters are smooth. But who knows what could happen?

You've never believed in love, but he's the picture of the model bachelor so he wears it better. People believe it on him. On you, you're just someone who hasn't found the right person. So if he finds out that his image of true love isn't real, what's the next logical stop?

You're just hedging your bets.

You're a smart girl. A modern, forward-thinking girl. You know how to take care of yourself.

Don't show your hand until you need to. Wait 'til the dealer calls.


	187. last time in new york

She isn't the kind of person that keeps lists. Neither of them are, really, but lists get made. Have to for the wedding.

There are the people to invite, the kinds of foods to offer, travel arrangements and save-the-dates. There's a lot of planning; there's a lot of paper; there's a lot that Ted helps them out with.

It happens by accident.

A list of things she doesn't expect; a tally of times she anticipates this crashing and burning before they get to the altar, of times she thinks about running away; a list of things she wants to do before this whole thing becomes permanent.

It isn't doubt, it isn't cold feet; it's just curiosity.

This is not the thing she thought she'd be up for (and is she still?); this is not the person she thought she would've been by now (and is she still?); and there's so much in her life that makes her feel like she doesn't even know herself anymore.

But she looks at Barney, and there's nothing there but truth.

Maybe that's why they keep failing, and trying again - they know each other too well and pretend they don't, pretend that this is something new.


	188. the broken code

They sit on the beach for another half hour without talking. The rain makes the sand stick to the bottoms of his palms and his hair keeps dripping water into his eyes. "You really mean it, Ted?"

Ted tilts his head. "Yeah, Barney, of course I do."

After all, he wasn't the hero of the story; he was never supposed to get the girl. And somehow...

"I really love her, you know," he says, casting his eyes down to brush at the loose sand on his hands. A bit of it brushes against his wrists, slips into his sleeve.

Ted smiles at him. "Yeah," he says. "I figured that out."


	189. the poker game

She meets him at the bar later that night for a drink. "Here," she says, pushing it along the counter towards him. "It really belongs to you."

James half-smiles and taps his finger against the edge. Takes a long sip of his scotch. "So, we haven't really had a chance to talk, you and me."

"Talk?" she repeats. "About what?"

"You and my brother. I hear you're a team now."

"Yeah," she says. "We are."

"And you're fighting a war against my mom?"

"Yeah, that part was kind of unplanned."

He laughs, a warm sound that soaks into the atmosphere around them, that makes her relax.

"So what happened?" she asks. "If you don't mind me..."

He shrugs. "I wasn't really paying attention to what was happening. I guess I got caught up in the kind of person that I wanted myself to be that everything else didn't really seem to be a priority."

She peers down into her glass, listens to the liquid crash against the edge of the glass with the motion of her hand.

"You know," he says, "Barney - he's - he's always known who he was. Even when we were kids."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They sit in the silence for a few minutes, bask in it. "We're family now, you know."

"If you listen to my mom, it depends on who ends up winning this whole thing."

"Oh, I'm totally going to win."

"Try telling her that."

"I got you a little something." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two small parcels, tied together with ribbon, and sets it beside her glass.

She lifts it, gives it a cursory shake. "Wedding gift?"

He shrugs. "Pre-wedding gift, I guess. Don't worry; I paid attention to the registry."

She grins. "What is it?"

"His and hers cigar cases," he says, with a soft laugh.

She nudges the ribbon aside with the pad of her thumb. The shiny metal engraved with their initials.

"Thank you," she says.

He leans his weight against her, sliding the ring back onto his finger. "Welcome to the family," he says, draining his drink. "And you better not try that poker business on me again."

She clicks her tongue. "Gotcha."


End file.
